Reply With QuoteAnd a Cleric worth playing...Originally Posted by WildElf
I like the fact that there's the potential for all of those. I really wanted the Barbarian to be a martial controller, although in hindsight, I really wish the ranger had been (especially given the PHB imbalance of having two martial strikers!). There's no martial controller yet, although the community has been trying to brainstorm one.
I don't have the PHB2 yet, so I'm not sure if they actually filled in all the possible combos outside of the still missing martial controller.
And a Cleric worth playing...
Why do we need D&D to be like an MMO anyway?
Welcome to 2007!
It's pretty clear from the design of the game that online play was a major factor. Now that D&D Insider is all but vaporware, I'm betting we'll see some expansion book or 4.5e with expanded out-of-combat skills, powers, and systems.
Why do you feel DDi is vaporware? they still have regular articles, monthly Dragon and Dungeon eMags, the great character builder just came out and was recently updated, and more.
They promised a lot more initially.
They promised, and advertised in the back of their books, a dungeon builder, character visualizer, and online game table. Basically a complete package for internet D&D play. You can't do any of those things with D&D insider.
They released the character builder in January and there's been no word on what they're working on now, if anything (besides updating the DB for the character builder).
They're still working on the online game table stuff. I saw a demo of it at GenCon last year that looked promising (if early). I was skeptical about their ability to deliver quality software until the character builder came out, though. It's very well put together and has proved to be invaluable to my group. Our DM uses it to create quick stats for NPCs, even. As a player, I really love having a program do all of the math/rules enforcement for me and giving me customized cards to print out.
Paizo init chart. Works pretty well.
Something seems wrong here to me. If the system does one thing well it's balancing combat.
How many players do you have, and are any of them playing a defender?
If nothing else I'd love to know why your game needs this, even if it's just for seeing how the game breaks under different playing styles.
I'd say that's about right, maybe lean more toward 12 if you're including RP encounters in that mix. One level every third four hour play session works really well in RPGA, and I plan to make that my golden rule.
Short form - I picked the wrong style game for the time constraints of my playgroup (1-2 games/month at best, more like once a month). So I needed to accelerate my campaign a bit or risk it taking longer than even I could stand. If I were playing on a more consistent basis and with something that didn't go overboard on the dungeon crawl, this would be less of an issue.
Also - dungeon crawling modules still require a fair amount of prep work.
Long form
I knew going into this I'd be running on a somewhat ad hoc short notice basis (hey, tonight looks free, lets play!). To that point, I picked up a module (Keep on the Shadowfell), and assumed that I could run it with minimal prep and that it would suffice for our needs.
I don't have the same amount of hate that some people do for it (the opportunities for RP really are lacking in it, so you as a DM have to compensate a bit), but what I quickly discovered is that while the early part of the module can be done very much as a decent mix of RP and Conflict, the Keep itself is one long ass dungeon crawl (somewhere around 20+ fights, all of them at full XP budget).
While I'm fairly confident that I could drive a standard combat down to about 35-40 minutes (pre-roll monster initiatives and to-hit), the infrequency of play was going to continue to be a lasting problem simply due to the sheer number of combats required to get through this. I looked at shaving off some of the rooms (which I did do), but I was still left with enough fights that I felt were important to help set the tone and establish story elements for the dungeon.
Two or three game sessions of dungeon crawling I felt would be appropriate and satisfying for the players without dragging on overly much. To accomplish that though, I still needed to try and get 3-5 combats + RP and kibitzing into a standard 4-5 hour gaming session. Cutting monster HP in half accomplished that easily - even down a member (warlord has left the group, leaving a rogue, fighter, wizard, and cleric) and having to refamiliarze themselves with the system, we still managed to go through somewhere around 6 fights as well as a nice RP seen with a prisoner (oh Splug, I love you so much).
Long term, my current plan is to finish this stupid module, ignore H2 and H3 as they are rumored to have much the same problem, and either go home brew one-shots with a loose metastory for the players to tie into or to take a good look at the Scales of War adventure path which has gotten some good reviews.
Last edited by jwtheiv; 03-25-2009 at 02:17 PM.
Yes yes yes. I know. I bring it up now because everyone is talking about how each category needs a controller, striker, etc. What I should have asked is "Why do we need one of each of these types for each broader category?"
You could also try the Goodman games adventures... Dragoras Dungeon eg is pretty good
One thing I've done is, once it's clear the party has the encounter well in hand is to treat the last few mobs as minions. Usually, it's the last couple of ranged attackers.
Yeah. I ran this one as well. I had similar problems, along with the fact that some of them were just plain broken.
I had no idea what the intention was in certain parts of the game. And why wouldn't you want them being able to buy magic items when they went back to town.
The problem with KOTS is that it introduces you to the weaknesses of the system and not its strengths.
Splug love you too!(oh Splug, I love you so much).
Please don't hurt Splug...
One shots are the way to go.Long term, my current plan is to finish this stupid module, ignore H2 and H3 as they are rumored to have much the same problem, and either go home brew one-shots with a loose metastory for the players to tie into
From this point forward I'm looking at any material as smaller encounters to be chopped up for an evening's play.
I've seen both in play, and the cards are just better I think.Paizo init chart. Works pretty well.
Well that sucks. POS won't let me log in to get the full version. I can log into the insider website fine, but it says I have a bad login if I try it from within the character builder.
As I remember it you have to use your email address to login into the builder.
It's something goofy like that.
Yeah, I've done it carefully about 10 times now and nothing. Oh well, I guess that's what trouble tickets are for.
Keep in mind that KOTS came out before the books, and is supposed to be able to be run without any rulebooks. So there's a lot of stuff that they left out for that reason.
(I've been running KOTS with my family. It works well for those purposes -- if we play in an evening after work/school, we have time for one room/encounter a day, and if we play on a weekend, time for 2-3 encounters before the kid wants to move on to something else. It is getting a bit monotonously dungeony, though. Would it kill 'em to put an NPC or two down there?)
Hey its the first adventure for 4e from wotc. Wotc (or tsr) is historically weak with first adventures but the keep does one thing well... If your party is able to beat irontooth they have learned the basic tactics.
The character builder is great. The fact that it produces power cards with your character makes life so much easier. Previously we were printing out the fan made cards built with the magic set editor and gluing them to index cards. The C-builder ones do all the math for you too. The only problem I see is every time you gain a level or update gear you might need to run off a whole new sheet, which can get pricey with the ink.
I was super excited about 4e when I heard about the game table, as I have a lot of friends who have moved away that I'd like to play with remotely. I realize there are other options out there, but I can't figure out the other remote game tables I've tried. Mostly because I'm lazy. WotC demoed their game table last year, before they laid off a huge amount of D&D staff. Who knows what, if anything, they're working on now because they won't talk about it.
If you haven't already, I also recommend that anyone GM'ing 4e get signed up with Wizards' RPGA program. It can be a bit tricky as you need to get a physical slip of paper with a player number on it before you can sign up and you have to find those at brick and mortar shops (they can order them) or at official RPGA events (which are fairly plentiful these days). There's also the option of posting here and those of us with extra cards can mail them around.
In any case, once you've signed up with the RPGA you can take their GM certification test. It's an online, timed, multiple-choice test that quizzes you on the 4e rules. Mostly it challenges you to be able to use the three main books (PHB, DMG, MM) for information you can use to parse the sorts of basic situations you may come across in the game.
Once you're a certified GM, you'll have access to their catalog of Living Forgotten Realms adventure modules. These are adventure modules designed to be run in 4 hours or under and are flexible enough to account for party size and relative party level (the modules themselves are broken into groups for lvls 1-4, 4-7, etc). For the most part these are excellent little adventures that are great for a weekly group (or as set pieces in a larger campaign).
The program's free, so for a little grunt work on your part you can get access to a bunch of quality material.
Hmm it looks like they still use 3.5e for the RPGA!
Ignore that. In fact, ignore everything but getting yourself linked up with them.
It's tragically organized, and their database should be a case study for failure, but somehow still fun and useful.
How hard is the test? I'm almost considering trying it out. Whipping out that RPGA Certified Dungeon Master card at a bar is bound to get me laid!
My FLGS is going to order these for me, so I guess I'm definitely going to be on the hook now for getting signed up.
I'm looking over the Sorcerer rules and I'm just having an impasse with the rules. Chaos Burst states that if your first roll of a turn is an odd number, you make a saving throw. I've looked at the saving throw rules again to see if I'm missing something but I can't for the life of me figure out what.
What is this saving throw against? Is this supposed to mean that you pass your next saving throw? I don't understand how this is a benefit or even a negative since there isn't any further information about what the consequences of failure are, and every google result I see just has people saying "Yup, that's awesome."
So what am I missing here?
It means that if your first roll on your round is an odd number, you may roll a saving throw against a condition you are suffering from that a save can end.
I had the same issue when I first read various save-granting powers in the Player's Handbook when 4e was released, and found it confusing since I was used to "making saving throws" usually meaning succeeding at them in earlier editions.
Would it have killed them to put "against any condition you're currently suffering from" at the end of that sentence, or is that just understood by those who've actually played the game at this point?
I have never seen this phrase before, and yet it's absolutely perfect for so many tragically organized things.
Would read this thread again. A++
Probably not, especially since the Warden Class feature Font of Life has the extra line of text. I guess it's one of those Strange Adventures In Editing we've sadly come to expect from the supplements.
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