The title says it all really.

I was reading through the dnd character sheets recently posted in the OT forum (was shortly moved to here) and they got me curious about the game; I've heard huge amounts about it and I understand the premise but how does one actually play it?

I googled it but most of the info was pretty useless.

Thanks in advance

I do Living Forgotten Realms (you make a character and can take it to any LFR game around the world) and a home game. I guess I left off my Genasi elemental blaster Wizard from the home game off the list. Most of the people in the home game also run/play in the local LFR group.

Go to the D&D website and see if there are any Encounters (weekly adventures) or LFR groups in your area.

Thanks for the reply Ahtman but I'm looking to just play a home game with some friends who are also interested so a walk through of the basics would be more useful.

EDIT: To be a little more specific.

What are "feats"?
How does combat work? I understand it operates in rounds the aim is to reduce a foes health to 0 but other than that i haven't the foggiest.
Also how does movement work?

I'm getting pretty mixed messages from the internet as a whole in that half of what i see is pretty relaxed and story based in that its free movement with some stat checks decided by the DM but the other half seems to be approaching the level of rules complication of a wargame.

corpsesarefun wrote:The title says it all really.

I was reading through the dnd character sheets recently posted in the OT forum (was shortly moved to here) and they got me curious about the game; I've heard huge amounts about it and I understand the premise but how does one actually play it?

I googled it but most of the info was pretty useless.

RPGs in general follow this format: The players are divided into the players (often collectively referred to as 'the party') and a GM (Game master, alternatively referred to as a DM, referee, or other term). The GM essentially controls the world, while players are generally responsible for a single character.

The GM's "job" is to make sure everyone has fun. Depending on group dynamics, this can mean fulfilling desires for character advancement, setting up difficult but achievable challenges, or other things. The players react to this.

As a general rule of thumb, players make characters by relatively strict guidelines: Either rolling randomly for some things, or spending points, etc.The GM has no such limits, which is why I state above that it's their responsibility to make things fun. In general, crushing the entire party with a massively overpowering horde of enemies isn't fun for anyone but the GM: Good GMs masterfully arrange things so the players can make it through challenges, albeit only barely.

The players are rewarded, usually by some sort of character advancement. In D&D, it's Experience Points, which accumulate to add to levels, which grant new abiltiies, etc. THey also get loot like better gear, rare items, etc.

D&D follows this model. Various RPGs offer more tools for GMs to balance play and may limit GM powers in various ways. D&D has definite guidelines for what an 'appropriate' challenge for a party of a specific level is, but these can be abused. Some GMs and groups prefer very story-driven campaigns where the characters actively pursue a storyline, while others prefer a more open-ended 'sandbox' where it's the player's responsibility to seek out the Fun Stuff the GM has planted.

To answer the feats question feats are basicly passive abilies that any given character has picked up that help define a character and make him differant. In this fashion you can make 2 clerics play differantly because of the feats they have selected.

A lot of this is highly version-dependent. Feats are pretty much version 3-4, for example.

corpsesarefun wrote:
What are "feats"?

In general, Feats are small 'traits' a character has. An analog to 40k would be special rules like ATSKNF or Fleet of Foot. In 3rd they tend to be a 'big deal' as you might gain abilities (like Cleave letting a fighter swing against multiple targets). In 4th they tend to be more 'specialized' bonuses like a conditional bonus to hit, special resistance, etc. There are many that interact with Powers (see below) to enhance them, or give more uses, etc. Characters get a couple at first level, then another one every few levels.

In 3rd, as I said, they're a bit bigger deal. Some of the 'oomp' granted by feats in 3.0 was moved to the role filed by Powers in 4. In 3.0, Fighters tend to get a lot of feats, and they can often take advantage of them for special attacks.

Powers are a 4th edition concept. basically, everyone has some sort of special abilities that have been packaged into various Power abilities: for the spell-casters, your spells are now Pwoers. For the combat types, Powers include special maneuvers, stances (ongoing combat tricks), and similar. Powers are not the whole range of options in combat, but they tend to be the majority, especially if you're GM is new to running a game. (It's a lot easier to adjudicate powers vs. dealing with random actions a party will think up.)

corpsesarefun wrote:How does combat work? I understand it operates in rounds the aim is to reduce a foes health to 0 but other than that i haven't the foggiest.

A basic 'outline' of combat would be (This is focused on 4th edition, but broadly true of all editions):
1. Roll Initiative: In general, each PC gets their init, each group of NPCs gets a roll.
2. Each Combat Round, each PC or group of NPCs acts in descending init order.
a. Each character gets a standard action, a move action, and a minor action (and free actions).
b. The character can take these in any order, and there's some room to wiggle these, such as trading a Standard for a move, or a standard for another minor.
c. In general, Standard actions are attacks, heals, and similar. Movement is obvious. Minor actions are things like activating a less powerful ability or sustaining a power, etc.
d. Powers are marked as to what kind of action they require, and can be used.
e. Powers and other actions are resolved by a d20 roll, plus mods, vs. a defense number. PCs and monsters have four defenses (Armor, Will, Fortitude, Reflex) Different powers target different defenses, so there's some strategy to powers beyond positioning. I.E. a character that centers on mind-controlling magic should use it on low-Will mindless automatons, while the sneaky rogue might try attacks against Reflex on the same.
f. Characters and monsters have Hit Points. Killing a PC is actually somewhat tough as long as he has friends who can heal or drag him away.
3. Combat may have environmental effects. In 4th edition these are a big part of the game, and many published scenarios do interesting things like have hazardous terrain that must be crossed and similar.

corpsesarefun wrote:Also how does movement work?

Movement in combat rounds is measured in squares for convenience.

corpsesarefun wrote:I'm getting pretty mixed messages from the internet as a whole in that half of what i see is pretty relaxed and story based in that its free movement with some stat checks decided by the DM but the other half seems to be approaching the level of rules complication of a wargame.

Yes. People run things differently, and different versions tend to play a bit differently. It depends on your group, but most groups are not 100% combat, and some may be near 0%. I like the fun of tactical combat setups, but some people prefer more role-playing and such. No one is wrong, here. In general, if the players are just exploring an area you don't worry about counting squares and such. On the other hand, a possible situation might involve needing to search an area for a quest item while part of the party holds off a monster, so you might have a situation where the PCs are searching in combat.

RPGs are very open-ended. You get what you want out of them, ultimately.

Thanks Balence that helped quite a bit

My final question is are all feats and powers combat based or do they just cover general abilities? For example would knowing multiple languages come under feats/powers or would that be a purely RP thing?

corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks Balence that helped quite a bit

My final question is are all feats and powers combat based or do they just cover general abilities? For example would knowing multiple languages come under feats/powers or would that be a purely RP thing?

If you're talking about v3.5 then the rules are available, free of charge, on the internet.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=d20/article/srd35

corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks Balence that helped quite a bit

My final question is are all feats and powers combat based or do they just cover general abilities? For example would knowing multiple languages come under feats/powers or would that be a purely RP thing?

As with many questions, it's somewhat version-specific. Some feats definitely boost non-combat skills and give things like extra languages, definitely. One 'class' of Powers is Utility Powers, which tend to be written for combat use, but are not directly offensive. For example, my 4th edition character is a Druid and has a Utility Power that allows him to shapechange into a bird for a while. It can be used in combat (extra mobility) or can be used if the party needs someone to go to the top of a cliff or similar and climbing isn't feasible.

My group generally doesn't make a big deal about languages and such because of our desired level of plot-focus, but I know some people do... For us, it's no fun having to skip talking with an NPC because no one knew we'd need some specific dialect months or years earlier.

One bit problem with 'investigation' in RPGs is that it can turn frustrating quickly. For example, some adventures are set up such that the PCs (Player Characters) need to find a clue or similar before they can progress. If the group just can't roll well it's a brick wall. Some more modern RPGs (and scenarios for D&D) are trying to deal with this. basically, as a GM it can make sense to say "Well, they didn't find the letter with the plot spelled out on it on their own. I'll have an NPC find it and give it to them, but they lsoe a day and the abd guy will have a couple extra minions in the big boss fight.

To be honest, my group has reached the point where we tend to fast-forward past a lot of challenges as they just aren't as interesting, but maybe we're all old and jaded. In the above example (the cliff) the GM would probably just have us work out something (Like one 'strong guy' climbing the cliff) and then hand-wave the rest of us being hauled up.

D&D tends to focus on combat. Various editions give various tools for roleplaying, social challenges, etc. but in most editions there tends to be a lot of subjectiveness. 4th has a system called "Skill Challenges" but ti has flaws, as well. In general, it's soemthing a GM needs to learn to deal with, and every edition of D&D gives a selection of tools to help.

(Or for another way to look at it: It's easy to play a really strong guy even if you get winded lifting a pillow. It's tougher playing a really suave guy if you get sweaty palms whenever a pretty girl talks to you.)

I just play fakey little scenarios with OP characters.

"there's this dungeon, right? It's underground. And there's 12 Ancient Black Dragons here. Go kill them with this mage guy working with you. Oh, and he gives you an anti-dragon sword. Oh. You won. Here's a million gold"

D&D is stupid and tedious any other way.

Thanks again

On the subject of versions, what would you recommend? 3, 3.5 or 4?

Samus_aran115 wrote:I just play fakey little scenarios with OP characters.

"there's this dungeon, right? It's underground. And there's 12 Ancient Black Dragons here. Go kill them with this mage guy working with you. Oh, and he gives you an anti-dragon sword. Oh. You won. Here's a million gold"

D&D is stupid and tedious any other way.

We used to call that Monty Haul gaming in reference to some TV game-show personality (Let's Make a Deal), Monty Halll.

In high-school, I had a dragon that I kept in a bag of holding that I hatched from an egg after killing his mom.


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corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks again

On the subject of versions, what would you recommend? 3, 3.5 or 4?

Probably 3.5 to start out with because you can get the rules for free (free's good, right?) and make your own adventures.

I haven't played 4th but it looks easier and more streamlined and seems to play like a non-digital video game (WoW).

The reason 3.5 is free is becuase it is dead. Unless you want to try and download a bunch of splat book .pdf just go with it's successor Pathfinder. Since you are just getting started it is best to have a book to be able to keep on hand to flip through and reference at a moments notice or to let a friend look through.

General Advantages Disadvantages of each:

Pathfinder:
- More character oriented and driven
- Requires greater mastery of the system to make characters but chars tend to either be brokenly overpowered or fairly useless if not well planned out.
- Smaller player base (sorry, it's true) but tend to be more loyal

Dungeons & Dragons (4e):
- More combat oriented
- requires miniatures
- Larger player base, meaning increased frequency of running into that guy.


Both have a decent amount of books available and in the end a lot of the pro's and con's will depend on your group. You can still have a combat heavy Pathfinder game, and a story oriented non-combat adventure in 4th. It is up to you and your group.

If you are getting into Pathfinder you need the monstrous main book that is players guide and DM guide in one. There is also a monster guide that will be needed.

For 4e the Essentials Rulebook and DM guide are both up to date rules and work in Essentials and 4e. Essentials is a streamlined 4e for new players. You can mix and match characters from both but I wouldn't really recommend that. The Monster Vault for 4e is pretty awesome as it comes with an adventure, the monster manual, a map, and monster counters to use till you get some minis. If you want to test it and learn the rules fairly quickly there is the Red Box which has a solo adventure to teach the rules and a streamline party adventure for you to then teach your friends the basics.

Depending on your area it may skew one way or the other but 4e tends to have more players at this point. At Gencon there were far more 4e tables than Pathfinder. In my area there are 6 - 8 Pathfinder regulars and about 20-30 regular 4e players.

You aren't really going to go wrong either way as they are both good games. I personally think 4e is a better introduction for people new to pen and paper rpg's, but again, both are good.

I thought WoW was a digital version of D&D, not the other way around.

corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks again

On the subject of versions, what would you recommend? 3, 3.5 or 4?

Pathfinder

After a couple of adventures I was thinking about scrapping the class system and trying to implement a custom class system instead, any thoughts on how successful this would be?

There is so much in D&D that custom isn't really necessary.

If you truly want a lot of customization (and all the headaches that come with it) go 3.5.

3.5 has enough expansions to choke a donkey and is epically customizable.

If you just want to have fun, play games, not spend hours on one combat and use all that saved time on roleplay/other things, go 4.0.

corpsesarefun wrote:After a couple of adventures I was thinking about scrapping the class system and trying to implement a custom class system instead, any thoughts on how successful this would be?

It's been done, but I honestly don't recommend it, especially with 4e. D&D has classes for a reason. 4e emphasizes this with the Roles (All classes fall into rolls like defender, controller, striker, etc.). If you don't have a defender in the group, combat will be tough as you've got no one to soak up hits, but you can make do. The same for the other rolls. Letting characters do a bit of everything could get broken quick, and would invalidate a lot of the class powers.

At the more detailed level, there's a lot of niche protection as well. For example, picking locks is best handled by a thief/rogue type. Sure, a wizard can do it, but it now requires an expensive and time-consuming ritual instead of having the right spell handy. A big problem with older D&D editions was that the power curves were very uneven: Fighters started very strong, but dwindled as levels went up, outshone by spell-casters.

I like classless systems... One of my favorite RPGs is Deadlands Classic, which has no classes, but you can (if you want) give a Character an Arcane background which works in a similar way, but is not required. D&D is a different game, and classes are part of encouraging a party to work as a team.

4e is a neat system. It's a bit less built to be tinkered with, though, than 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder as there's a lot of complex interactions. On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

In a proper system, things are all linked together, so changing a major mechanic like scrapping the class system is going to make a lot of the balance and soforth not work anymore. You might be able to get away with modifying 4th that way, but I recommend against modifying 3.x very heavily unless you're also willing to scrap the Valencian system.

I'm also strongly of the opinion that high fantasy works best with a class system anyway, though I've been poking at a class/pointbuy hybrid (akin to what WW does, but with better defined class roles and only 3 or 4 of them).

corpsesarefun wrote:The title says it all really.

I was reading through the dnd character sheets recently posted in the OT forum (was shortly moved to here) and they got me curious about the game; I've heard huge amounts about it and I understand the premise but how does one actually play it?

I googled it but most of the info was pretty useless.

Thanks in advance

Well, first you must make peace with the fact that everytime someone asks you about your hobby you will be made fun of. After you do that, make sure you are comfortable with the fact that women will generally ignore you for the rest of your days.....

Now you're ready to open your rulebook and start playing!

Balance wrote:4e is a neat system. It's a bit less built to be tinkered with, though, than 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder as there's a lot of complex interactions. On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

I still don't understand the obsession with having a samurai class, what's the difference between a samurai and a fighter supposed to be in the first place? At least the ninja classes had magical ninja stories to work from to differentiate it from a rogue.

pretre wrote:There is so much in D&D that custom isn't really necessary.

If you truly want a lot of customization (and all the headaches that come with it) go 3.5.

3.5 has enough expansions to choke a donkey and is epically customizable.

If you just want to have fun, play games, not spend hours on one combat and use all that saved time on roleplay/other things, go 4.0.

The whole "you are this class" thing just annoyed me The fact that they just added a billion other classes to try and cover all of the bases didn't really help

Deadshane1 wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:The title says it all really.

I was reading through the dnd character sheets recently posted in the OT forum (was shortly moved to here) and they got me curious about the game; I've heard huge amounts about it and I understand the premise but how does one actually play it?

I googled it but most of the info was pretty useless.

Thanks in advance

Well, first you must make peace with the fact that everytime someone asks you about your hobby you will be made fun of. After you do that, make sure you are comfortable with the fact that women will generally ignore you for the rest of your days.....

Now you're ready to open your rulebook and start playing!

I play Warhammer, remember

Requia wrote:In a proper system, things are all linked together, so changing a major mechanic like scrapping the class system is going to make a lot of the balance and soforth not work anymore. You might be able to get away with modifying 4th that way, but I recommend against modifying 3.x very heavily unless you're also willing to scrap the Valencian system.

I'm also strongly of the opinion that high fantasy works best with a class system anyway, though I've been poking at a class/pointbuy hybrid (akin to what WW does, but with better defined class roles and only 3 or 4 of them).

As I said I'm not a massive fan of defined class roles and I was thinking of having a few non-high fantasy games a go (just reskinned dnd) as well as vanilla DnD.

Balance wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:After a couple of adventures I was thinking about scrapping the class system and trying to implement a custom class system instead, any thoughts on how successful this would be?

It's been done, but I honestly don't recommend it, especially with 4e. D&D has classes for a reason. 4e emphasizes this with the Roles (All classes fall into rolls like defender, controller, striker, etc.). If you don't have a defender in the group, combat will be tough as you've got no one to soak up hits, but you can make do. The same for the other rolls. Letting characters do a bit of everything could get broken quick, and would invalidate a lot of the class powers.

At the more detailed level, there's a lot of niche protection as well. For example, picking locks is best handled by a thief/rogue type. Sure, a wizard can do it, but it now requires an expensive and time-consuming ritual instead of having the right spell handy. A big problem with older D&D editions was that the power curves were very uneven: Fighters started very strong, but dwindled as levels went up, outshone by spell-casters.

I like classless systems... One of my favorite RPGs is Deadlands Classic, which has no classes, but you can (if you want) give a Character an Arcane background which works in a similar way, but is not required. D&D is a different game, and classes are part of encouraging a party to work as a team.

4e is a neat system. It's a bit less built to be tinkered with, though, than 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder as there's a lot of complex interactions. On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

It's less the fact that there is classes that I have a problem with, more the whole "you are a tank, go soak damage" style of doing things and the lack connection to reality (mages suck in close combat, for no reason). However 3.5/path finder does sound much more interesting than 4th.

Balance wrote:On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

This is how I made my 4E Kobold Samurai. Longsword counts as a (small creature sized) Katana. Mechanically there doesn't need to be a huge difference between the two.


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corpsesarefun wrote:The whole "you are this class" thing just annoyed me

But you aren't your class. Personality isn't determined by class, nor is a persons means. If you look at an infantry platoon, all the guys are soldiers, but that doesn't define their personalities. Class determines base training and skills. There are a lot of Fighters in my game group but they are all very different characters with different ways of handling themselves.

Ahtman wrote:

Balance wrote:On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

This is how I made my 4E Kobold Samurai. Longsword counts as a (small creature sized) Katana. Mechanically there doesn't need to be a huge difference between the two.


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corpsesarefun wrote:The whole "you are this class" thing just annoyed me

But you aren't your class. Personality isn't determined by class, nor is a persons means. If you look at an infantry platoon, all the guys are soldiers, but that doesn't define their personalities. Class determines base training and skills. There are a lot of Fighters in my game group but they are all very different characters with different ways of handling themselves.

I meant combat roles more than personality, the personality and role playing aspect is fine as it is.

corpsesarefun wrote:I meant combat roles more than personality

So you want to be able to take hits, do tons of melee damage, cast massive spells, and disappear into the shadows all on one character? Classes don't really define everything about combat. Playing a fighter doesn't mean you only have 3 moves and all fighters act the same (unless you're playing 3.5!). A polearm fighter will be different than a Brawler fighter, will be different than a battlerager, will be different than a Paladin (I' don't play them so I can't recall their different types atm). There are so many variations that, again, the combat roles aren't that limited really, unless you are trying to make an uber character Mary Sue that is an all in one. People rarely know everything or are skilled at everything even in the fantasy genre.

Ahtman wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:I meant combat roles more than personality

So you want to be able to take hits, do tons of melee damage, cast massive spells, and disappear into the shadows all on one character? Classes don't really define everything about combat. Playing a fighter doesn't mean you only have 3 moves and all fighters act the same (unless you're playing 3.5!). A polearm fighter will be different than a Brawler fighter, will be different than a battlerager, will be different than a Paladin (I' don't play them so I can't recall their different types atm). There are so many variations that, again, the combat roles aren't that limited really, unless you are trying to make an uber character Mary Sue that is an all in one. People rarely know everything or are skilled at everything even in the fantasy genre.

I don't want Mary sues, nor do I want OP characters however I have problems with the whole "striker, controller, defender, leader" system that 4th has - it just seems like a character would get locked into only doing one thing in combat all through individual fights and in every fight that character has.

corpsesarefun wrote:
I don't want Mary sues, nor do I want OP characters however I have problems with the whole "striker, controller, defender, leader" system that 4th has - it just seems like a character would get locked into only doing one thing in combat all through individual fights and in every fight that character has.

Ummm... I'd recommend trying before you knock it. Roles are very fluid and can change from fight to fight.

My current party is:

- Goliath Fighter (Role 'Defender'). She uses an Executioner's Axe and has the Battlefrenzy? feature (Temp Hps) on hit. Even though she's nominally the defender, on a lot of fights she out damages everyone because of the ardent. She can turtle up and go all defender (or more often, because it is more fun) go on a killing rampage. As long as they're hitting her and not me, I'm cool.
- Dwarf Invoker (Role 'Controller'). In any fight with more than 2 bad guys, chances are I'm going to do the most damage in that fight. Powerful AOE damage; I moved away from most of the control aspect, but have tools to keep enemies locked out, if necessary.
- Halfling Rogue (Role Striker). He wanted to stab things in the face and focused on it. Single target damage is great. He also has a lot of stealth and a ranged aspect so depending on the fight, he either works his way into the back and gives the Goliath flanking or hides in the shadows and snipes the baddies.
- Human Ardent (Role Leader). DM's character. Mostly heals and makes the Goliath swing again. Occasionally forgets his place and stabs something with his spear.

As you can see, even though we are all technically doing our roles in the party, most of us are doing something else and have options as to how we want to do it. D&D, much like any roleplaying game, only pigeonholes you as much as you let it.

People will tell you that 3.5 is more customizable (which it is) and Pathfinder is more detailed (which it is), but what they don't tell you is that you don't need it. 4E's rules are simpler and easier, leaving you more room to do what you want rather than what the system wants you to.

YMMV

It really doesn't matter a whole hell of a lot what system you choose to play, it is just a set of rules used to represent an imaginary world. It only really needs to be as technical as you want it to be as well. If I do not remember the rules for a certain combat action and cannot find them in the book in less that a couple minutes, I usually just wing it and make up a fair way to accomplish whatever it is, so the game can move along.

The nice thing about learning and using the 3.0/3.5 systems is you can find all kinds of 3rd party world books pretty cheaply, and play anyway you like with the one system, spending more time with a new book learning the setting and not so much trying to memorize the new rules.

If you want to play something that is light on rules (easy for a first timer to DM) try 1st or 2nd edition warhammer fantasy. The stats are similar to 40k and would be easy to understand from the get go, and the world is dark, gritty, and fun to play in. I found the 1st edition Warhammer book in a used book store for 5 Dolla!

Thanks again for all the advice guys

I didn't mean to come across rude pretre and I probably should give the game a go before complaining.

Requia wrote:

Balance wrote:4e is a neat system. It's a bit less built to be tinkered with, though, than 3.0/3.5/Pathfinder as there's a lot of complex interactions. On the other hand, the game designers have come around and now support 're-skinning' which can make things a lot more interesting: I.E. saying "Well, I want to play a Samurai but there's no Samurai class. Let's take some other class and change a few details, maybe even substitute a weapon or power, to make it fit instead of designing a whole new class."

I still don't understand the obsession with having a samurai class, what's the difference between a samurai and a fighter supposed to be in the first place? At least the ninja classes had magical ninja stories to work from to differentiate it from a rogue.

I was just trying to think of an example. In the game I'm in, I'm using the 'Deva' race with only thematic tweaks to represent a character who was born in an ancient era and got transported to the future: think the steretype of the ancient 'man of Atlantis' kind of guy. The Deva racial package has, so far, worked great as it's got some bonuses to mental stats, a neat power to represent knowing a lot of ancient lore, and some appropriate skill boosts. (I could have picked a different raceif I was just min-maxing to optimize the bonuses for my Druid class, but this fit into the story much better.)

As for Samurai, I think what people generally want is, at a minimum, some rules to make them different. Pre-4.0 fighters tended to be boring! Not ineffective, just dull. I do agree that, in general, it makes perfect sense to build a Samurai based on a Fighter (or maybe even an Avenger?) with appropriate powers to represent the cliche 'one chop' and weapon deflection schticks. Probably very doable, but I'd have to get my books out.


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corpsesarefun wrote:It's less the fact that there is classes that I have a problem with, more the whole "you are a tank, go soak damage" style of doing things and the lack connection to reality (mages suck in close combat, for no reason). However 3.5/path finder does sound much more interesting than 4th.

Mages aren't real...

There's generally a way to make a 'fighter mage' in most versions. 3.5/Pathfinder has multiclassing, 4.0 has some odd kinda-sorta methods, but makes it a bit less attractive. The big argument against it is that a group of 'generalists' is a lot less interesting than a group of 'specialists'. If one character can fight in the front lines AND throw spells AND sneak around, why does he need friends? As has been said, you can generally make a wizard that can fight. 3.0 (and 3.5/PF) got rid of a lot of the blanket prohibitions and just made it mechanically unfavorable. Unless you do random chargen (which I wouldn't recommend any more) you're unlikely to be above average in more than one attribute...

For D&D you have the following attributes (Compare to 40k's statline of S, T, WS, BS, I, etc...): Strength (Lifting things, also makes hitting in melee easier), Constitution (Like Toughness), Dexterity (Nimbleness, Ranged Attacks, Sneakiness), Wisdom (Thinking Heavy Thoughts, not being made to think you're a duck), Intelligence (Filling out tax forms, etc), Charisma (Being the Old Spice guy). In general you either roll dice for each of these or allocate points between them. 4th edition generally focuses on an allocation method, as I believe Pathfinder does, too. In previous versions, you'd roll, and potentially end up with a character who would best make himself useful by donating his corpse to fill in a pit or something...

Anyway, as I said earlier, it's the GM's responsibility to make sure everyone has a good time. Classes can actually help with this, as they give a firm indication of why Player A should attempt something, not Player B. It's also the player's responsibility to not be rude to everyone involved, and that includes letting everyone have a moment to shine.


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corpsesarefun wrote:I don't want Mary sues, nor do I want OP characters however I have problems with the whole "striker, controller, defender, leader" system that 4th has - it just seems like a character would get locked into only doing one thing in combat all through individual fights and in every fight that character has.

The roles are truly more a tendency than a forced 'job'. Even classes in the same role have to do things different ways, and different builds of classes will divide it out further. My druid is interesting in combat because he generally has to switch from being a long-range artillery type to up-close fighter. Sometimes this is quick, sometimes it takes a while.

The published scenarios have a lot of fights that encourage this by adding in ambushes, weird terrain effects, and similar. Enemies that come in from behind the party force spelllcasters out of their comfort zone, or encounters where the entire group needs to run to an objective change things up.

I think one reason 4e implemented the roles (which I know were commonly used in MMOs and other RPGs years before) is to make the game more accessible for 'pick up' games.' If you've got a Striker, Defender, and Leader and a 4th player wants to join in, they're suggested (but not forced) to look at Controllers... of which there's several depending on the books you have access to.

4e does some neat stuff. 3.5/PF is a bit more 'open' but I never linked that the rewards for so many prestige Classes are basically adding spellcasting levels in to the mix, as the spellcasting levels tend to be of marginal use and you're often seeing something a 'real' wizard/cleric would have had a half dozen levels before. 4e's power system means you're generally seeing new powers as characters grow, even if they're occasionally variants on other powers.

They're both good systems, just for different mindsets. I'd say 4e is more approachable for casual crowds at the moment, but that's just my opinion.

corpsesarefun wrote:The title says it all really.

I was reading through the dnd character sheets recently posted in the OT forum (was shortly moved to here) and they got me curious about the game; I've heard huge amounts about it and I understand the premise but how does one actually play it?

I googled it but most of the info was pretty useless.

Thanks in advance

4th edition: Play Heroquest for the same feel
3 and 3.5: Rules rules rules...
2nd: *bashes head off of desk*
AD&D: yay
Basic: never played it but I am sure the name says it all

corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks again

On the subject of versions, what would you recommend? 3, 3.5 or 4?

Instead of those, for your first roleplay experience try a game of Dark Heresy or Deathwatch, both are 40k related tabletop roleplay games. If hard pressed, just make sure you choose for yourself what game you wish to play, remember that newer isn't always better, it's all based on the person.

happydude wrote:

4th edition: Play Heroquest for the same feel
3 and 3.5: Rules rules rules...
2nd: *bashes head off of desk*
AD&D: yay
Basic: never played it but I am sure the name says it all

More or less. This is one reason why I try to advocate the Pathfinder RPG system and Dark Heresy/ Deathwatch. 3rd and 3.5 were horribad with the amount of books and rules. 4th is just spamming books with minimal content. With Dark Heresy your at least still supporting the 40k universe, same with Deathwatch.

Besides, why buy multiple books when another company doesn't try to spread it out to just try to make money off you? My single 500+ Pathfinder core book was probably the best purchase I've made in a long time. So much content, for so little.

Still, if 4th stopped spamming and consolidated books, I would speak much more favorably of it. Then again, most people that get into these kinds of games don't exactly have a ton of money to toss at it.

juraigamer wrote:More or less.

Less. Much less. That 'chart' is fairly awful.

Hate to be a thread-jack, but in terms of making a PC, how do you determine the amount of powers they get at the beginning? Is it ALL level 1 powers?

Ask the DM for the starting level. Every DM has different opinions on where to start players. I usually start my players at level 6, I've seen everything from level 1 to level 10 for starting levels.

Cryonicleech wrote:Hate to be a thread-jack, but in terms of making a PC, how do you determine the amount of powers they get at the beginning? Is it ALL level 1 powers?

What system are we talking about?

Cryonicleech wrote:Hate to be a thread-jack, but in terms of making a PC, how do you determine the amount of powers they get at the beginning? Is it ALL level 1 powers?

Thread jack all you like.

juraigamer wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:Thanks again

On the subject of versions, what would you recommend? 3, 3.5 or 4?

Instead of those, for your first roleplay experience try a game of Dark Heresy or Deathwatch, both are 40k related tabletop roleplay games. If hard pressed, just make sure you choose for yourself what game you wish to play, remember that newer isn't always better, it's all based on the person.

I'm not hugely interested in any 40k RPGs and I'm curious about getting into RPGs as a whole with a group of friends who for the most aren't into 40k anyway so I think I'll give those a miss, pathfinder still seems interesting though.

Cryonicleech wrote:Hate to be a thread-jack, but in terms of making a PC, how do you determine the amount of powers they get at the beginning? Is it ALL level 1 powers?

Pretty much. For details, read the rule book. That's what it's for. One nice thing about 4th edition is there's no (or very little) weirdness like a 'spell level' system that is not directly related to the main level system.

At higher levels there's some power swap stuff, but at 1st level you generally get a couple at-wills, an encounter, and a daily. Maybe a utility... I'd need to check the book to confirm. Some classes (especially with Essentials) get more or less.

Corspsesarefun: Pathfinder is available for free online, too!
http://www.d20pfsrd.com/

This website has basically everything you need to run a campaign. That said, the production values and background in the pathfinder books is amazing (much better than D'n'D 4th) so they are well worth a look.

Chiming in late on systems, I'm a fan of both. 4th Ed is more streamlined, and easier to run for the GM. Monsters are easier to build, and in some ways that frees up your creativity. I think combat is fun and tactical in 4th. However, you need a map and counters or miniatures, and I think that's a pain. Some people like it, I've run games where it worked well, but it takes a lot of planning.
Pathfinder is more fluid, a bit harder to build characters in, and definitely harder to build and run monsters in. In 4th, each monster is designed to be easy to use, but in Pathfinder they will have many, many options and it's easy to miss the "point" that makes them worth their challenge rating. However, you don't need minis and the system does lend itself (I feel) to a more creative, storytelling approach to combat. Outside of combat I see basically no difference between the two.

Other systems I love are In Nomine (which uses a simple 3D6 resolution for everything and is about angels and demons trying to sway humans to good or evil acts) Seventh Sea (D10s rolled and you need a certain total) which is swashbuckling orientated with rules for drama dice and so on in combat, and WFRP/Dark Heresy which use percentile roll under and are set in the warhammer fantasy and 40K worlds.

Da Boss wrote: you need a map and counters or miniatures, and I think that's a pain

Thank goodness this isn't a forum devoted miniature gaming or that might sound a bit silly.

I understand what you mean, though. I like miniatures so that is part of the appeal to me.

It appeals to me, too, but I guess I like the flexibility that not using minis gives me.

I've used them in a couple of short campaigns and it's gone down well, but I don't dedicate the prep time to sessions these days to get it all sorted out. Reckon you need to be very well prepared to do it off to a tee- I was living alone and had more free time the last time I did it.

I'm often tempted to try a mini-using campaign again, believe me. Having to do it though, that's what I find onerous.
The urge to collect and paint up every possible monster in the monster manual is still there, and it's a big part of why I love the D'n'D boardgames so much.

Hate to break it to you, but no system requires miniatures.


They are strongly recommended in 4E, they were recommended in 3/3.5, optional in 2E and 1E and neato in Basic/White box.

You can play with slips of paper or just your imagination. Back in my day, we just told the DM what we were doing and imagined the whole thing. (Along with making swoosh, zap and spang noises.)

I reckon 4th can be played without them, yeah, but then you're missing out on some of it's best features (the tactical combat end of things).

I agree you don't need actual miniatures though. I probably just needed to invest in some wipe clean graph sheets or something.

Da Boss wrote:I reckon 4th can be played without them, yeah, but then you're missing out on some of it's best features (the tactical combat end of things).

I agree you don't need actual miniatures though. I probably just needed to invest in some wipe clean graph sheets or something.

Chessex mat with wet erase markers works quite well.

DnD? What is that?

Try Werewolf: The Apocalypse if you want to play combat monsters that spend most of the time ripping things apart and then acting all emo about it later.

If you play Vampire: The Masquerade, you just act all emo all the time.

Or there is Rifts!

corpsesarefun wrote:

I'm not hugely interested in any 40k RPGs and I'm curious about getting into RPGs as a whole with a group of friends who for the most aren't into 40k anyway so I think I'll give those a miss, pathfinder still seems interesting though.

Ah my apologies, I though that since this is a 40k website that there was interest in such things, hahaha.

juraigamer wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

I'm not hugely interested in any 40k RPGs and I'm curious about getting into RPGs as a whole with a group of friends who for the most aren't into 40k anyway so I think I'll give those a miss, pathfinder still seems interesting though.

Ah my apologies, I though that since this is a 40k website that there was interest in such things, hahaha.

No worries
I am interested in 40k but more for the modelling than the background to be honest.

Between Balance and Ahtman, you have all you need to know.

As for personal preference, for beginners 4.0 is WoW-without-electricity... literally... classes and everything...

Though, as a DM, Pathfinder allowed everyone to enjoy themselves much more. It was so immersive and player-oriented that you can even run a group on skype.

AvatarForm wrote:Between Balance and Ahtman, you have all you need to know.

As for personal preference, for beginners 4.0 is WoW-without-electricity... literally... classes and everything...

Though, as a DM, Pathfinder allowed everyone to enjoy themselves much more. It was so immersive and player-oriented that you can even run a group on skype.

I really really don't like wow so I'm not sure if that is a good thing

Ignore that Wow BS. People have been saying that without really understanding it because they do not like 4th ed.

Wow has been D&D without electricity since it came out. Everything is derivative of something, that's how creativity works.

WoW has roles. D&D 4E has roles. Oh no! Guess what, 3.5/3e/2e/1e/Red box/White Box had roles as well, they were just less obvious.

One of the great things that 4E does is that it makes it so that you don't have to have the 'short straw player' that you have in most other systems (including WoW).
"Who's going to be the cleric/healer this game?" GROAN "I guess I'll be heal-bot."

Leaders (4E's equivalent) not only heal (which is usually done with their minor action) but also do damage, control the battlefield and enable other party members to be more effective.That's directly opposed to WoW where healers in level-appropriate content (not outgeared zerg fests) are heal-bots and that's it.

Also compare the Defender role to Tanks in WoW. Tanks in serious content in WoW cannot do any other role. Their role is to stay alive while folks spam heals on them and other folks stab the monster. A perfectly viable alternative in 4E D&D is to use a Defender as a demi-Striker and have them use the repercussions of ignoring their marks and the damage they output as their contribution to the party, rather than just their AC/HP.

Lastly, when's the last time you had a skill challenge in WoW? Or Role-played? or used a non-combat skill other than manfacturing?

Just because something is 'common knowledge' on the internet doesn't make it true.

4.0 is fun. It's a very tightly 'integrated' system, so hard-core rules-tweaking is probably not the best idea unless done very carefully and with a lot of forethought.

3.5/PF is fun. It's a bit easier to tweak, but there's a lot of stuff the GM will need to review.

In general, I think 3.5/PF is a bit more 'simulationistic' as it still has the 3.0 conceit that monsters and player characters are 'equal.' They're described by the same numbers, and it's relatively easy to move between Player space and GM space.

On the other hand, this makes monsters relatively complex, and making them interesting takes a lot of effort. Sure, you can make that Orc fight interesting by giving them class levels, but beyond low levels that can be a nightmare for the GM to handle, so it's usually one or two with class levels, especially if it's anything with additional stuff like spells to handle.

4.0 Monsters are just complex enough to do the job (provide opposition to PCs) and designed with the conceit that they probably won't be in two combats. They generally come in flavors, so in addition to the basic Orc listing you also get (I don't have a MM handy, so I'm making stuff up) a Orc Shaman, Orc Soldier, Orc Archer, etc. Some of these can be interesting, some basic, etc. The neat thing is that these are actually all usable in a mix in combat! The 'specialists' have Powers prepared for their attacks written in the same style of players but balanced for the appearance: I think most 'caster' type normal opponents have one 'Encounter' ability for a powerful first strike and a couple At Wills for normal attacks.

This ignores Minions, which have higher defenses but only 1 HP. They're a great mechanic for big fights where the PCs need to wade through enemies.

It's a neat system if you're using it as intended, but not as free-form as 3.5/PF for other uses. A 'Diplomatic' campaign in 4.0 would be a struggle, but is technically possible. On the other hand, if 'diplomatic' means going to a neighboring nation's capitol and having to defeat a plot to assassinate the neighboring king to help secure the alliance, 4.0 is ready to rock and roll.

Agreed with Balance.

Another great thing with 4.0 is that the DM is considered a player and part of the experience. It isn't quite the adversarial role in early D&D, but more of a different kind of player than a bookkeeper/accountant/writer.

In 3.0/3.5 (especially at high levels), the DM was that masochistic guy who spent hours generating encounters for you and making the experience fun without much return other than your happiness and whatever that gained him personally.

Seriously, when I was DM'ing our longterm game in 3.5, some encounters would take hours to make, even with Character Builder. How long does it take you to make 5-7 20+ level NPCs? Geeze.

4.0 takes a lot less work to prep for and I can have more fun on the opposite side of the screen.

I've only spent maybe 20 hours playing dnd, and I only spent that much time because I was determined to give it a chance to wow me into liking it. It failed, and so here is my impression of the game.

I found dnd (4th edition) to be excessively dull when I tried it. Took hours to complete one encounter and after that I stopped caring about whatever weak story plot we were supposed to be slogging through.
I should clarify that we were playing some huge grand Champaign from a magazine I think. But seeing as how I never leveled in the two encounters we played through, and these encounters ran about 3 hours apiece, I shudder to think how long it would take to become a maxed out character.
The combat was IMO not so gripping; I rolled a single d20 once every 30 minutes. If I was lucky then I rolled another d6 and added modifiers to it this was about as exciting as it got. If I was unlucky than nothing happened, and I waited another 30 minutes until I could roll my lone dice again.
There seemed to be little gameplay that did not revolve around combat. What little there was required a skill check which was a pass/fail and more often than not contributed nothing, even if you rolled a natural 20.
After my 20 hours I never went back to the gaming group.

Again this was just my experience, yours may be different.

But I witnessed nothing there that I couldn’t have gotten from playing a video game instead.

@Ma55ter_fett :
Dude, I'm sorry, you had such a horrible experience, but that wasn't 4E's fault. The group you played with must have sucked.

For a three hour combat, either you were playing some massive high-level combats or they were really bad at it.

Add to that that there was no compelling out of combat interaction and you have just had a bad experience.

I hope you get a chance to tabletop D&D with a good group someday. Some of my best memories are playing with D&D (all versions) with friends and that just did not sound anything like my experiences.

I have to agree, RPGs are pretty much based on how the group is.

I think the recommended progression for 4th edition is a level every 2-3 sessions. My group does 2-3 big encounters in a session, but I'd say we're closer toe very 4.

ultimately, it's the GM's responsibility to keep combat moving and the player's to know their character powers and make decisions relatively quickly.

Skill Tests/puzzles/etc. are also something some GMs run well, some run poorly. I think they work best if the Gm si on the player's side a bit: They should be encouraging every good idea that nets a +1 to the final roll such that the actual roll is pretty easy at the end of the day. Some GMs go an alternate route and are happy to be the only ones who know the solution to a puzzle and let the players fumble around for hours until they state they want to examine the 4th rock from the left that the GM forgot to mention was a slightly different shade of grey...

Leveling in D&D is generally something of a 'big deal.' For 4th, personally I think I've reached the point where I'd be happy if the GM just handed out levels to the group at an appropriate time. It removes some number crunching (albeit minor) for XP counts, and the game works best if everyone is at the same level anyway. It's generally easier to level at the beginning or end of a session anyway, especially since so many people are using electronic tools to manage characters.

Balance wrote:Leveling in D&D is generally something of a 'big deal.' For 4th, personally I think I've reached the point where I'd be happy if the GM just handed out levels to the group at an appropriate time. It removes some number crunching (albeit minor) for XP counts, and the game works best if everyone is at the same level anyway. It's generally easier to level at the beginning or end of a session anyway, especially since so many people are using electronic tools to manage characters.

I'm thinking of doing something like this for my next game. I'm going to talk to my players and see what they think. It is a joke in our group that no one keeps XP correct and we have to do 'XP checks' at least once a session to make sure everyone has the right total. Maybe making it more dramatic or tied to certain events (and at the beginning / end of a session) will make it easier and more dramatic.

Much has been said here, but I play both 3.5 and Pathfinder and both work fine. 3.5 is cheaper to play because there are plenty of used books around. 4.0 can be fun too. Just pick the system that appeals most to you.

It isn't a good idea to start 4e at high level. The combat gets more complicated with all the effects flaying around which isn't a problem with experienced players but for new players it can grind the game to a halt.

Ahtman wrote:It isn't a good idea to start any D&D edition at high level. The combat gets more complicated with all the effects flaying around which isn't a problem with experienced players but for new players it can grind the game to a halt.

FTFY.

I really can't add anything to this thread. I haven't done any type of RPG's in a long time, maybe 12 years since the last session and we played Deadlands. It was probably another 12 years before that when I was playing D&D. Anyway, I just got together with some old friends and we decided to try some RPG. We picked D&D 4e and we had a great time. We played for about 5 hours and were able to create characters and start an adventure, even made it through 2 encounters. It helped that the DM has experience playing the system, so I think it moved pretty smoothly. I liked how combat worked with the miniatures, it was easier to keep track of where everyone was. I am looking forward to playing it again.

One question though since we were trying to keep it fairly simple so our characters were pretty straight forward. Halfling rogue for me. What are the other races and classes you can choose to be in 4e? Could you give a brief description of them (strengths and weaknesses)?

http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Races
http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Classes

A little google turned this up.

pretre wrote:
I'm thinking of doing something like this for my next game. I'm going to talk to my players and see what they think. It is a joke in our group that no one keeps XP correct and we have to do 'XP checks' at least once a session to make sure everyone has the right total. Maybe making it more dramatic or tied to certain events (and at the beginning / end of a session) will make it easier and more dramatic.

My usual GM has, in the past, allowed players to 'share' XP so everyone gives 100 to level up whomever is behind or similar. Moving to just giving out levels as rewards for major quest goals is probably the next step.

The one neat thing my group does is that extar XP are sometimes given out to individuals as rewards for doing cool stuff, keeping the group focused, etc. If I was running 4th I think I'd want to add or adapt some sort of bennie system (See Savage Worlds for a version) as a way to reward creative play and replace this. I think I read somewhere that this exists, as there's a set of rules for 'boons' that are kind of like 1-time disposable magic boosts. Basically, instead of giving out XP, giving some way to re-roll a bad die, add a small bonus in, or similar would be a nice useful effect, and probably more 'group friendly' than XP bonuses, which are generally meaningless, or if they aren't, lead to 1 character being a higher level than the group.

Did 3.5/PF get rid of the 'Crafting Magic Items costs XP rule? I assume this was to prevent a wizard making hundreds of scrolls, but it ended up making crafting less than useful. A better way to handle it would probably be to make it hard to do and make sure the players are aware that time doesn't stop, and the Evil Overlord is going to do a ton of bad stuff while they are busy making scrolls and potions.


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Ahtman wrote:It isn't a good idea to start 4e at high level. The combat gets more complicated with all the effects flaying around which isn't a problem with experienced players but for new players it can grind the game to a halt.

Very true. I was at GenCon last year and got into a Tournament game where we were given about 5 minutes to figure out lvl 25 characters. Very difficult.Lots of feats that had interactions with powers and such.

Needless to say, we did not do well. Fun game, but we got stomped. Didn't finish one encounter in the time alloted for four... We also didn't know that the characters were published in advance.

Balance wrote:The one neat thing my group does is that extar XP are sometimes given out to individuals as rewards for doing cool stuff, keeping the group focused, etc. If I was running 4th I think I'd want to add or adapt some sort of bennie system (See Savage Worlds for a version) as a way to reward creative play and replace this. I think I read somewhere that this exists, as there's a set of rules for 'boons' that are kind of like 1-time disposable magic boosts. Basically, instead of giving out XP, giving some way to re-roll a bad die, add a small bonus in, or similar would be a nice useful effect, and probably more 'group friendly' than XP bonuses, which are generally meaningless, or if they aren't, lead to 1 character being a higher level than the group.

I definitely do the XP bonuses, but I love! the idea of non-xp bonuses. I may steal that for our next game. Rerolls is my current favorite out of the list you just made.

pretre wrote:http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Races
http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Classes

A little google turned this up.

Thanks. I guess I should have tried to google first.

Wasn't there a shifter race as well and a goliath?

Yeah, that's probably not an entire list and it isn't 100% up to date. It was just the best one I found in a second or two on google.

To get more info, I would recommend actually going to the books / D&D Online.

boogeyman wrote:

pretre wrote:http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Races
http://4e.writh.net/wiki/Classes

A little google turned this up.

Thanks. I guess I should have tried to google first.

Wasn't there a shifter race as well and a goliath?

Actually there are two shifter types and Goliath.

Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

corpsesarefun wrote:Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

If you've got more questions, as away.

Balance wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

If you've got more questions, as away.

I haven't yet but I'm sure once things get going I will.

In the mean time it seems that this is providing a useful place for people to discuss the pro's and cons of each version (which was all very helpful for me ) amongst other things.

EDIT: I think i'll give 4th a go after reading the wiki as I'm rather enamoured with the artificer class.

corpsesarefun wrote:

Balance wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

If you've got more questions, as away.

I haven't yet but I'm sure once things get going I will.

In the mean time it seems that this is providing a useful place for people to discuss the pro's and cons of each version (which was all very helpful for me ) amongst other things.

EDIT: I think i'll give 4th a go after reading the wiki as I'm rather enamoured with the artificer class.

Other rules sets have the same class as well.

Are there other roleplay groups in your area, or are you looking to create one? Sometimes the best option is to try to join a game to try it before you buy. Your local gaming store may have monthly gatherings, I know the Pathfinder rpg has something called pathfinder society http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety and I know there is something for 4th called adventures or something...

corpsesarefun wrote:

Balance wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

If you've got more questions, as away.

I haven't yet but I'm sure once things get going I will.

In the mean time it seems that this is providing a useful place for people to discuss the pro's and cons of each version (which was all very helpful for me ) amongst other things.

EDIT: I think i'll give 4th a go after reading the wiki as I'm rather enamoured with the artificer class.

Yea, I think this has been really helpful. I understand wanting total creative control over character creation, but I think 4e gave me enough options and still lets you keep your imagination (you can play them however you want) for your character. Even though I played a rather generic character this time I still had fun and I really liked how encounters were played. I am looking forward to exploring it further.

Hmm, so, another general query, again hate to be a bother.

So I found the page on choosing powers (27, go figure) But perusing over them as compared to the powers characters get in, say, the Red Box, I wondered why they were different. Should I just give the characters their abilities from the PHB? Or should I stick with Red Box?

It might help if you specified which version of D&D you're talking about.

Cryonicleech wrote:Hmm, so, another general query, again hate to be a bother.

So I found the page on choosing powers (27, go figure) But perusing over them as compared to the powers characters get in, say, the Red Box, I wondered why they were different. Should I just give the characters their abilities from the PHB? Or should I stick with Red Box?

PHB is regular 4E while the Red Box is Essentials. If you are running people through the Red Box adventure just stick with the characters made for that. Do not combine Essentials Classes with 4E when character building. The essentials trade off options for streamlining and some of the stuff isn't meant for 4E classes. If the power doesn't have a level on it and the class name you can't use it elsewhere. For example the At-Will stances just say "Fighter" on them but no level is given. Those stances if given to a regular 4E fighter would be really broken. Essentials characters allow for some choice but in general are pre-built and designed that way with some unique powers. They were designed to be like older iterations of D&D as well as introduce new players to the game.

Ahh, thanks Ahtman.

That's a really dumb move on WotC's part though... so how should I progress the group? Should I just have them generate characters from the PHB and skip the lame Red Box?

Essentials and 4E are wholly compatible from what I've heard.

The classes in the Red Box are separate (Slayer and Knight vs Fighter) from the PHB classes but can be run side by side with them.


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That being said, I don't own the red box, so only play with the online material and the original PHB, but know folks who use both Essentials classes and normal classes side-by-side. Also the feats from Essentials and everything else are meant to be updates to the feats in the PHB in many cases (see expertise feats).

pretre wrote:Essentials and 4E are wholly compatible from what I've heard.

The classes in the Red Box are separate (Slayer and Knight vs Fighter) from the PHB classes but can be run side by side with them.


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That being said, I don't own the red box, so only play with the online material and the original PHB, but know folks who use both Essentials classes and normal classes side-by-side. Also the feats from Essentials and everything else are meant to be updates to the feats in the PHB in many cases (see expertise feats).

We did it for a one-off adventure without major issues. In some cases the Essentials classes are arguably 'better' than the PHB equivalents, but may be a bit less flexible. The ranger-equivalent Scout that is based around Stances is very interesting, but you've basically got a couple powers you need to spam in addition to the stances. Still, it's a definite option if you want a frontier/wilderness man type hero. I think it's a bit less 'magical' than the PHB ranger, for example.

It may be that I was just looking at the online and not the book, but the essentials classes actually looked more complicated then their PHB counterparts.

Good to hear that they work out pretty well though.

They are compatible in the sense that you can have a Cavalier (Essentials Paladin) in a game with a Brawler Fighter (4e) but they aren't compatible in the sense that you can just swap any powers between the two. There are powers that you can but many of the Essentials are unique to to their class. The Essentials classes seem to be very powerful at lower levels but as time goes on they lose a lot of that power as they scale and lose flexibility.

The Scout can be stupidly over powered. Had one in a game where everyone else was 4E character. He had a Horned Helm (adds a die when charging), a hammer that added a die when charging, and the stance that did something when you charged. He was a Half Orc so he also had the encounter power that adds a weapon die to an attack and Power Attack from the class features that does the same. His basic attack was basically a Daily and he could do it at will. Of course the draw back was that his turn always was this:

charge
charge
charge + furious assault
charge + power attack
charge
charge
charge + power attack

which is sort of dull. At first he loved all the damage but got tired of doing the same thing over and over and over becuase there weren't really any other options. It was charge or melee basic.

Oh yeah, they are effectively different classes for most things.

Yeah, I've seen some good DPR numbers on the Char Opt board for scouts.

I'd rather have more options than OP in most cases though, so I'm with you on the boring part.

juraigamer wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:

Balance wrote:

corpsesarefun wrote:Shall this just be a generic DnD chat thread as a whole then?

If you've got more questions, as away.

I haven't yet but I'm sure once things get going I will.

In the mean time it seems that this is providing a useful place for people to discuss the pro's and cons of each version (which was all very helpful for me ) amongst other things.

EDIT: I think i'll give 4th a go after reading the wiki as I'm rather enamoured with the artificer class.

Other rules sets have the same class as well.

Are there other roleplay groups in your area, or are you looking to create one? Sometimes the best option is to try to join a game to try it before you buy. Your local gaming store may have monthly gatherings, I know the Pathfinder rpg has something called pathfinder society http://paizo.com/pathfinderSociety and I know there is something for 4th called adventures or something...

There isn't really a local gaming store where I'm from and I'm looking to create a group anyway.

A little google says there is a gamestore and group in your area:

http://community.livejournal.com/gameforce

pretre wrote:A little google says there is a gamestore and group in your area:

http://community.livejournal.com/gameforce

What do you know

Must be a new shop, I'll have a look at it.

3.5/PF pretty reliably will have a class that fits any concept you can think of that isn't ridiculously specific. That's the good side of being open and expandable.

There's no guarantee the classes will be good without being broken, especially once you get past the '1st party' stuff from Wizards or Paizo. That's the bad side.

Essentials was a massive edition to the 4.0 class roster I think. Before that most books were lucky to add 5 or 6, and Essentials added a ton of new classes... And class write-ups in 4.0 are several pages, mostly rules, for each class.

So in this case PHB would be best?

Essentials is based around being for new players. If you are starting D&D, I would start with the Red Box.

I've been around for a while and started a while back, so mainly use PHB.

Another big (if dubious) selling point I've heard for essentials is that it offers the 'scaling' experience some players are used to. I.E. if you want to play a class that requires a lot of choices in combat, they're there (Wizard) but there's also classes for those that don't want as many choices (the aforementioned Scout).

It is a good starting point for new players, I think.

Ahh, fair enough. So I should just run through the Red Box as a stand-alone, then if the players enjoy it then I should restart using the PHB? 'Cause I've written up a nice little campaign setting and I'd love to get to use it.

That sounds like a good plan. Think of the Red Box as a gateway drug and the PHB as something a bit more serious.

What does PHB stand for?
There are way to many versions

Player's Handbook

Ah I thought it was another subtype of 4th My mistake.

How long would you guys recommend each session is? Also does using miniatures add to the game much?

I find 3 hours is the right length for a game. Minis can add to the game if you like them and have appropriate ones, I find they can also distract if your players find it difficult to imagine that a troll is in fact a frost giant and so on. YMMV, some posters here are huge fans of using miniatures, I only use them the odd time.

I recommend using some sort of markers for 3.0 through 4th, but they don't need to meet the standards Warhammer players might expect, for example. My group generally tries to have painted roughly-WYSIWYG minis for heroes, but monsters are whatever is available. One time, while running a d20 (3.0) variant game called Weird Wars II, I used small candies for the base Germans.

4.0 really expects a gridded layout to be used for combats. It can be made to work without it, but a lot of powers involve fine control of placement that you might lose if you're just doing a combat without it. Some of the published adventures include map sheets to make this easier, at least for the major fights.

What I mean by 'fine placement' is that there's a lot of effects that either produce or effect zones (usually square chunks) so moving enemies around can be useful. Flanking gives a bonus, and a few monsters may have rules that do things with adjacent allies or enemies, so it may be essential to be able to move a friend or foe around to break up an enemies formation. The fighters and rogues tend to be best at this, which is a nice way of showing that they're bad-ass warriors who can move opponents around, not just meat shields who swing a sword occasionally.

3.0 isn't nearly as map heavy, but it does help.


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Oh, by "Roughly WYSIWG" I mean that in general the mini should get the race/class right but we're not picky about armaments and armor as they can and do change in play.

Hrm.

As well as vanilla DnD we are looking to make up a zombie survival variant that may or may not have magic, is there already anything like that out?

All flesh must be eaten pops to mind.

I'll look into it, thanks grabzak

All of my friends already play combat based RPG computer games so we will be focussing on story for dnd, if i can get it all organised I'll let you know how it goes.

There is a Sci-Fi 4E called Amethyst that mixes tech and magic, though not together (magic disrupts tech). We did a zombie apocalypse using that. It is ok but has a few problems mechanically, like a sniper getting a penalty to hit while prone but a pistol getting a bonus.

That sounds pretty crap to be honest :/
Boosting tech with magic is the main appeal of including magic to an otherwise non fantasy setting imo so I think will give amethyst a miss, thanks anyway though ahtman.

All Flesh Must Be Eaten might be a good suggestion for you, and an excellent idea from Grabzak. I believe it's a bit more abstract than 3.5/PF/4.0. More importantly, I think it's got a lot of 'toolkit' value the other games may not have. You can plug-in bits from a few other games from the same company if you need certain elements, for example.

corpsesarefun wrote:That sounds pretty crap to be honest :/
Boosting tech with magic is the main appeal of including magic to an otherwise non fantasy setting imo so I think will give amethyst a miss, thanks anyway though ahtman.

This is why we never used the disruption rules. It is a flawed but interesting idea but until one is comfortable tweaking I wouldn't mess with it. It is an interesting read though so just tossing it out there.

I had a look into all flesh must be eaten, it looks better good and I think I'll give cannibalizing its strong points into a reworked dnd a go at a later date.

Hey guys. I wrote Amethyst. Play Tau and 'Nids as well (full disclosure).
I wanted to mention a few things.

The next book, Amethyst Evolution, offers dozens of alternate powers and features to tweak characters. One of those tweaks allows you to drop the stalker's Anywhere, Anytime class feature and replace it with one called Smooth as Glass, which enables you to suffer no penalties to attack rolls from being prone when wielding a sniper weapon. The book also introduces aircraft, giant mecha, and nuclear weapons.

Also, the issue with disruption was a mechanical necessity given the setting I envisioned, with distinctive city-state enclaves of high technology surrounded by expansion of encroaching magic. Originally, there was no disruption, but the logic of the setting couldn't support itself. It was an attempt to create a world that didn't feel like Iron Kingdoms or Final Fantasy. There are other reasons as well.

It is a mechanic I often ignore myself, only introducing it as a role playing element to remind my players where they are. It is not required for game balance and can be removed in your game, canon Amethyst or not.

Just wanted to volunteer that.
Carry on....

I think that there are far too many sub-classes and specialists and feats in D&D these days. When starting a new game I have everyone stick to the basic classes until they obtain a few levels. Once their character has proven it's resilience and earned some experience, then I don't mind if the players want to begin specialization in a thing or two.

Might seem blunt but it saves a lot of wasted time when someones low level character gets flattened by a boulder.

snurl wrote:I think that there are far too many sub-classes and specialists and feats in D&D these days. When starting a new game I have everyone stick to the basic classes until they obtain a few levels. Once their character has proven it's resilience and earned some experience, then I don't mind if the players want to begin specialization in a thing or two.

Might seem blunt but it saves a lot of wasted time when someones low level character gets flattened by a boulder.

I think 4th edition had this kind of opinion as a design goal... The classes are intentionally somewhat simpler and you don't have Prestige Classes. The new equivalent (Paragon Paths) kicks in at level 11 for everyone and is a bit more restricted: you generally have a choice of 3-4 for your class, maybe a racial path or two, etc.

Heh. Yeah, 3.5 was a bit over the top for options. Not to mention expansions. I have like 3 milk crates of 3.5 books gathering dust right now.

pretre wrote:Heh. Yeah, 3.5 was a bit over the top for options. Not to mention expansions. I have like 3 milk crates of 3.5 books gathering dust right now.

I think for sanity's sake the GM and group really needed to form a consensus on which books were 'in play' for the game in question. My group generally stuck to WotC books only (which could still be a lot...) with no setting-specific stuff, with exceptions for when we played games int eh Iron Kingdoms setting, for example.

I proposed a similar idea for Shadowrun at one point. Shadowrun is technically classless, but you end up with a lot of effective classes as the rules actively penalize trying to do certain things (I.E. a Wizard is going to avoid cyberware as it reduces magic abilities) and there was a book or books for nearly every special focus: A 'Magic' book, a 'Gun' book (couple of these...), etc. I tried to limit characters to one add-on book for my own sanity as a player... My mage didn't really need a tricked out pistol and defended that as 'in character' because he just wasn't into guns (He could enchant weapons, mind you... he just didn't care about tweaking a pistol).

Similar concept for D&D. If you need rules from more than 2-3 books, you might be in trouble. Admittedly, I just realized my 4th edition character does this... :(

DiasExMachina wrote:Hey guys. I wrote Amethyst. Play Tau and 'Nids as well (full disclosure).
I wanted to mention a few things.

The next book, Amethyst Evolution, offers dozens of alternate powers and features to tweak characters. One of those tweaks allows you to drop the stalker's Anywhere, Anytime class feature and replace it with one called Smooth as Glass, which enables you to suffer no penalties to attack rolls from being prone when wielding a sniper weapon. The book also introduces aircraft, giant mecha, and nuclear weapons.

Also, the issue with disruption was a mechanical necessity given the setting I envisioned, with distinctive city-state enclaves of high technology surrounded by expansion of encroaching magic. Originally, there was no disruption, but the logic of the setting couldn't support itself. It was an attempt to create a world that didn't feel like Iron Kingdoms or Final Fantasy. There are other reasons as well.

It is a mechanic I often ignore myself, only introducing it as a role playing element to remind my players where they are. It is not required for game balance and can be removed in your game, canon Amethyst or not.

Just wanted to volunteer that.
Carry on....

Yeah I can understand why you would implement a feature like that, it just isn't what I want for that specific zombie based game
However the new edition sounds fething awesome and I will deffinitely look into it when it comes out.

Shadowrun also looks pretty awesome so I may have to dig a copy of that up too though I'm not sure if it's even supported anymore.

corpsesarefun wrote:Shadowrun also looks pretty awesome so I may have to dig a copy of that up too though I'm not sure if it's even supported anymore.

I believe it still is, but the Shadowrun system is a bit painful, to be honest. Still, your call.

Basically, if you aren't an experienced GM, I highly recommend picking a relatively 'good' starter game (D&D4th, Pathfinder, or maybe Savage Worlds) and running some prepared scenarios instead of launching into your own stuff right away. GMing is a lot of work: you have to balance the rules side (Is this fair? Is this balanced? Are we doing this the right way? What is the rule for this?) with running the scenario stuff (OK, when is the best time to have the creeping zombies break through the window? When should the NPC reveal he's infected?) and trying to keep a group discussion going (OK, everybody focus.)

BTW: Savage Worlds hasn't been mentioned here so far, but it's a great RPG that has a lot of the same goals as D&D 4th, but is much, much lighter and easier to run. The basic concept is that it's OK for the GM to just wing it. It expects a tactical game, but not quite as much as 4th edition. There's rules in the main book for a lot of stuff (including zombies) and a very loose magic system (For example, the spell-caster type takes 'Blast' and it's up to the player and GM to decide if it's a fireball, an ice blast, a quickly-dispersing storm of summoned insects. The author's basic idea is that 90% of the time, you're jsut concerned with it doing damage anyway, so the 'trappings' of ice vs. fire are generally ignored or can be dealt with on the spot.


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Oh: Savage Worlds generally defaults to a sort of 'Pulp adventure genre' while it can stretch to do others.

(In my experience, most 'universal systems' end up doing one genre well, and stretch beyond that with various levels of success: GURPS is great for detailed games, but can break down when trying to run faster-paced stuff. d20 is great for high-adventure, but efforts to tweak it for other genres have had mixed success.)


There's Savage Worlds books for Weird War II, Deadlands (Cowboys and horror elements), Necessary Evil (Superheros), etc. as well as some generic setting toolkits for sci fi, horror, etc.

I know I may be unpopular for saying so, but have you looked at Essentials? IMHO, Essentials is a much easier way to learn and play 4th Edition D&D if you have no experience with it. I haven't check the whole thread so someone might have reccomended it already. Reggardless, I would repeat the suggestion.

AAANNNND in a segway into self promotion, Amethyst Evolution offers 7 Essentials classes based on our four technologhy-based classes from Foundations. So we got that covered as well.

Yeah I'll be starting with vanilla DnD, I'm just thinking of progressions in the future.

If you can find an old copy read Warhammer Fantasy Roleplay. It is full of good ideas.

http://www.rpgnow.com/
http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/

These are a great spot for ...uh. finding cool stuff, yeah.

As to D and D, played ALOT of first and second edition, a little third, and 4th turned me off to playing it. I'm not going to bask it, but there is a point where the BS flag has been thrown, and I'm past that point about it. On the net, Zombie games are about a dime a dozen, but to me, HERE is the place you want to go. Ignor the assclown who keeps poping up, if you let him. Theres a great starter to begin your journey into the hellbilly ride of zombie stomping. Along with RPG now's zombie generator, its boss.
White Wolf is getting into the zombie thing, but to me, they're late to the party, with everyone and thier brother with thier own special spin on the genere, Allflesh is pretty much the authority. Eden is a hit or miss company, but they have the added special charm of having Hack and Slash along for the ride. With heros like that, you can't go wrong. the little free RPG for Free gameday isn't going to be bad this year ( Walking Dead)

http://allflesh.com/

As for the way old school D and D played, it was easy, we didn't have anything else, so it was as good as your imagination could make it. I started out with the blue book, then had the red, blue, and green books a year or two later. Had more fun then should be legal at that time. couple of sets of dice, you were entertained for hours. We had a marathon weekend run that is still legendary. The thing missing from the new books is the general ability to let players think for themselves, make up materials, and encourage creativity. thats it, full stop. It really at the end of the day doesn't matter what system you play. ( And I can say, I've played LOTS) The bottom line is that YOU make it what you will. If you have something as basic as Aftermath, Gamma World, Space Frontiers, D and D, Awful green thing, etc.... The bottom line is that at the end of the day, it's you , a couple of your buddies, and a table with a couple of books. YOU all are the ones that give Jefe Longtooth, Chieftain of the Mezoa Barbarians the life and if you want to push it, your team and you can play ANYTHING out there in the interwebs.
http://greenronin.com/

http://www.cityofheroesrpg.com/

http://www.chaosium.com/

http://www.classicbattletech.com/

http://www.starfleetgames.com/

http://www.wizards.com/DND/

http://www.delta-green.com/


I recently picked up Delta Green, after playing around with Chaosiums stuff, pulling the free RPG off of the site, and running through the 20's haunted house stuff. It came back down to getting into the material and not honestly worrying about "Cool stuff and new shineys"

We've got a couple of local groups that play the 4th with laptops, and thier character sheets. We've got another group that has tables full of minis, books, etc. and they have thier fun, and we even have our local Deathwatch, Rogue Trader, Inquisition teams that play thier games, alongside the Advanced Squad Leader, Federation Commander, and old school Battletech players. They all have thier .. uh ways, but even they at the end of the day are having boat loads of fun.

When I was over in the hot place, we had access to numerous RPG's to be found on the net, I've continued to add onto my collections and am almost to thepoint of transfering my stash over to a portable hard drive, even after digging and pulling this and that from the net.

I hope you have as much fun finding your groups nich as much as I did the first time I found out about D and D, then branched off to the others like Twilight:2000, RIFTS, Gamma world, Etc. To me, most of the fun was the comeradrie and the get togethers on weekends and after schools for the battle royals, the adventures, and even some of the stories that transpired along with the characters. good luck in your search. Hope my links help you out.

There are literally hundreds of cheap or free RPG's to be found with a little google fu and some time.

Have fun.

If anyone is serious about giving DnD 4.0 a run, we currently have a DM and 2 party members for a skype group.

Looks like it will be run on USA time, with me chiming in at ungodly hours from AUS.

Initial discussions have this group progressing well on the way to a truly epic Epic of epicness...

The party simply requires someone to Lead and a healer/caster type...

AvatarForm wrote:If anyone is serious about giving DnD 4.0 a run, we currently have a DM and 2 party members for a skype group.

Looks like it will be run on USA time, with me chiming in at ungodly hours from AUS.

Initial discussions have this group progressing well on the way to a truly epic Epic of epicness...

The party simply requires someone to Lead and a healer/caster type...

Sounds tempting but I dunno if I would be able to get into it without the visual aides of having people there

corpsesarefun wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:If anyone is serious about giving DnD 4.0 a run, we currently have a DM and 2 party members for a skype group.

Looks like it will be run on USA time, with me chiming in at ungodly hours from AUS.

Initial discussions have this group progressing well on the way to a truly epic Epic of epicness...

The party simply requires someone to Lead and a healer/caster type...

Sounds tempting but I dunno if I would be able to get into it without the visual aides of having people there

Actually, we will have webcams going on the board and minis for dungeon delves, etc.

The best part about RPGs is that the majority is in your imagination, otherwise you would simply end up playing WoW... lol

Quick question. Do you think D&D 4e PH 1+2, DMG, and MM are worth $80?

If they are in good condition then that seems about right. The D&D gift set (PHB, DMG, MM) like new on Troll and Toad is $59.99, so $20 a book used is area. I'm assuming these are all the hardbound books and not the essentials softcover DMG and MM.

Yes they are. Thanks. It is either those or buying some beastmen to convert into my WE army. hmm??

boogeyman wrote:Quick question. Do you think D&D 4e PH 1+2, DMG, and MM are worth $80?

They are if you value hardcover.

If, like myself, you simply wish to read the rules and have a reference on hand, the PDF is much cheaper and fits nicely on my portable eReader

AvatarForm wrote:

boogeyman wrote:Quick question. Do you think D&D 4e PH 1+2, DMG, and MM are worth $80?

They are if you value hardcover.

If, like myself, you simply wish to read the rules and have a reference on hand, the PDF is much cheaper and fits nicely on my portable eReader

Can I get the PDF for a kindle?

boogeyman wrote:

AvatarForm wrote:

boogeyman wrote:Quick question. Do you think D&D 4e PH 1+2, DMG, and MM are worth $80?

They are if you value hardcover.

If, like myself, you simply wish to read the rules and have a reference on hand, the PDF is much cheaper and fits nicely on my portable eReader

Can I get the PDF for a kindle?

Yes. The Digital Rights Managed (DRM) PDF are available from Wizard of the Coast and other online suppliers.