4th & Dragon : Dungeons and Dragons...and stuff

Black Plauge - 04 March 2008 03:12 PM

Similarities abound.

Great minds think alike or conspiriacy theory?

Honestly Black Plague…
Im thinking Assisnation Plot Conspiracy level…
Better kick things over into Code Magenta.

sirtayls - 05 March 2008 08:56 AM

One question : at will powers can be used unlimited (so I understood) so why would the Eladrin ranger ever pass on using careful attack with a longbow?  Or is the point that he wouldn’t?

You are right, the point is he would not. 

That was actually the most tedious part of the 1st combat: getting people out of the “I will just attack” mindset and into the “use a special power every time” mindset.  Regular (or as they are called now, “basic")attacks are only used when certain actions or abilities trigger them.  Off the top of my head I know AoO (now just “opportunity attacks) trigger a “basic” attack.  I imagine there are other actions that will do that as well.  -PURE- conjecture on my part but I could really see a the Warlord class (a martial leader class) having an encounter or daily ability that gave all his allies a basic attack when he used it.

I am in the middle of trying to convince my group to let me run the 4e playtest adventure. I was also thinking that it could be beneficial for someone here to run the playtest (like you SuperJosh :D).

Heh, I had actually been trying to decide if I wanted to DM a 4e PbP.  It will just be a short intro adventure, obviously.  I guess you convinced me. As long as we can get 6 people I am game.

Anyone that is interested can just shoot me a PM. I am going o go ahead and assume that Talae is interested since he is the one that brought it up, and I have been talking to an old DM of mine about playing so there are 4 spots left, first come first serve!

OK Here is he deal:
*I need 6 players for the game. 
*You need to be able to post at least once a day. 
*I will rolls, so you have to be able to trust me.
*Any rules arguments/disagreements will be talked about before I render my final verdict, but once it is rendered no more arguments about it please.  I figure this is fair since none of us really know the rules.
*Character selection will be as follows. Once we have all 6 players I will roll 1d20 for each the highest gets 1st choice, then on down the line.
*I would prefer you read the rules primer and quickplay rules found here:
Rules Primer: http://www.wizards.com/dnd/files/news_20080228.zip
Adventure and quick play rules: http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t=220317
*Here are the character sheets if you need/want to look at them:
Charer Sheets: http://www.dragonavenue.com/downloads/ExperienceCharacters.zip

That is all I can think of that needs to be addressed before we start, if I think of anything else I will post it.

Still -0- more slots left.

Hello to everyone!  My first time on this fine forum, but probably won’t be my last (unless the
admin kick me off!)

I am one of SuperJosh’s regular players, and I was lucky enough to play the fighter and the wizard on the first evening that he ran the 4e adventure.  At first I wasn’t against it, but I wasn’t that excited about taking a detour from our already-in-progress campaign to dip my toes into uncharted waters.

By the end of the night, I was ready to pretty much switch, and to heck with 3.5e.

The biggest improvement for me was the way that everything just moved more quickly.  Our group is typically bad about wanting to form a committee and take a vote before anyone peeks around a corner, and Monday night the adventure just moved right along.  I am sure that that was partly because we were playing characters that we were not attached to, but the game mechanics were also just more streamlined.

The second thing that I liked was the variety of actions that each character class could choose from in a given round.  In 3e, a tank is a one-note cowboy.  “I swing with my axe.” Boring.

I liked the fodder enemies as well, but not just because it is fun to hack through them and feel all macho.  It seems to me that a clever DM can use them as speed bumps to hold up the PCs until the real monsters can get into position, and it just makes more sense to have kind of a commoner bad guy class to fill a goblin cave to the brim with.

Yeah, and I don’t think that I even need to mention the improvements to healing…

It’s good to hear from new members, as well as the player perspective. Honestly, where did your opinion fall prior to and after the mini adventure? Pro-4e/anti-4e/etc and why? Also, my players biggest concern with running the playtest adventure is that they will enjoy it and not be able to run a 4e campaign until June and just be teased in a major way. How accurate is this and is there anything I can say to convince them to let me DM a 4e playtest?

Im glad so many people are saying good things about 4e. I think all of my friends and myself were about ready to hole up in the bomb shelter and just keep on rolling.

But i still have my reservations about playing 4e. I didnt like 3e after 2 until i got used to it. Then I couldnt believe i ever played 2....

Oh well we will see.

OK guys I have my 6 players, so I will be runnign Andorax, Black Plaque, Eardianm, Obscureinfo, Sirtayls, and Talae through a short adventure.

I encourage all of you to come on over to the PbP forum and watch us so you can blast me on my sub-par DMing skills. Seriously though, all of my rulings are subject to discussion until I decide that we have talked about them enough since we are playing with gleaned rules at this point.

http://www.dragonavenue.com/forums/viewthread/592/

Yay for 4e teasers and making wish it was June or there was a leaked pdf of the core books.

I’ll just be content to watch it from the outside.

As will I Cameron… ;p

We’ll see how it goes - I’m excited for 4e because I never truly loved 3e or 3.5.  I was still stuck in my 2e ways I guess - it just seemed 3e was too dependent upon magic items to help your character survive.  I hated how characters were either UBER helpful (magic missile vs incorporeal) or UBER useless (oh, he has DR? and we have one magic weapon...if the mage prepared the spell...)

The whole ‘healing is a minor action for cleric’ thing is very exciting.

I agree with you a lot sirtayls.
I hate seeing DR, and hate being dependant on money and items.
Especially when the DM rewards neither until the end of the campaign.
XP and levels are also crucial. I like a lot of the concepts in 3rd and 3.5
I just got used to them and arent ready for them to change again.

Hello again! Sorry for the delay in replying to Talae’s questions, but here goes.

Honestly, where did your opinion fall prior to and after the mini adventure? Pro-4e/anti-4e/etc and why?

Well, to tell you the truth I had a bunch of other stuff in my personal life going on, so I had’nt given it any thought or looked into 4e at all. I went into the adventure completely neutral to the point of apathy, but I have been friends with SuperJosh for like a million years, and I figured that if he was stoked about it then I should give it a chance.

I guess I wasn’t excited about 4e at all, especially buying new books. Now I am completely sold, and plan to buy the PH through Dragon Ave’s link this coming week.

Also, my players biggest concern with running the playtest adventure is that they will enjoy it and not be able to run a 4e campaign until June and just be teased in a major way. How accurate is this and is there anything I can say to convince them to let me DM a 4e playtest?

Well, I can’t imagine them just wanting to scrap their current characters if they are already attached to them, so even if they love the new system like I think I am going to, their attachment to their characters should carry them through to June. As a DM, it will probably be harder for you to wait, since most of the rules-wrangling is on your capable shoulders.

As far as selling the idea, tough to say. Our group had mixed feelings, but we were all glad after SJ bullied us into it . Just do like we do among my friends; blackmail, cajole, question people’s manhood and/or womanhood, and if all else fails, grovel.

Good Luck!

This seems like it would not work all that well for pbps - lots of choices and things that you can do that would greatly affect what the next characters in initiative would do.

I’m not saying I’m annoyed by the choices, they’re nifty, but there’re a lot of them and it would poke at many of pbp’s weaknesses.