Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I am a dragonborn, palidan class, lvl1
Any advice?

Don't play 4th edition.

lord of the ghosts wrote:I am a dragonborn, palidan class, lvl1
Any advice?

What specificaly?

Divine Power has a cool feat which makes your breath weapon give temporary hit points to any allies caught in it instead of doing damage. That's a cool combo.

With their additional strength, Dragonborn can make for heavy damage paladins. If you're not going heavy shield for maximized AC, then definitely use a two handed weapon for big damage.

Cheese Elemental wrote:Change is bad! Whine whine whine!

Fixed your post.

Don't fall off a table and die like I did.

Anpu42 wrote:

lord of the ghosts wrote:I am a dragonborn, palidan class, lvl1
Any advice?

What specificaly?

not sure, any is fine.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
@cheese, too late.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Mannahnin wrote:Divine Power has a cool feat which makes your breath weapon give temporary hit points to any allies caught in it instead of doing damage. That's a cool combo.

With their additional strength, Dragonborn can make for heavy damage paladins. If you're not going heavy shield for maximized AC, then definitely use a two handed weapon for big damage.

I have a shield, it's heavy.

Trick your Dm into giving twice as much exp as he should.


I still don't know how I let that one slip by.

By the way, I'm not saying that 4th edition is bad by any means, but it puts too much emphasis on rollplaying instead of roleplaying.

Dragonborn Paladin

Well lets start with the Attributes.
Make you 3 big ones Charisma, Strength and Wisdom in that order
Suggested Attributes
-Str: 13 [+2] 15 {This is important, but at 4th it can go to 16
-Con: 12
-Dex: 11 {This is also the other stat I would raise at 4th}
-Int: 10
-Wis: 16
-Char: 14 [+2] 16

Race
-Go with Fire and Strength for your Breath Weapon

Class
-This should start you with 27 Hit points and 11 Healing Surges.
-You should also have 3 uses with you Lay on Hands
-Skills: Diplomacy, Endurance, and Heal
NOTE: You can make a Heal Check in Combat to help a Adjacent Ally, if you make your Head DC: 15 [Heal should be +8], they can make a Save or Spend a Healing Surge as a free Action.

Powers
-I am going to keep it simple and just keep to the Players Handbook.
At Wills: There are only 2 real Choices
-Holy Strike: Your Damage is Radiant, this messes up most undead. {Radiant}
-Valiant Strike: a +1+ in combat is nothing to laugh at.
Encounter Powers: There are 2 good choices based on what kind of Paladin you are, The Warrior or the Defender.
-Radiant Smite: 2[w]+Str+Wis Radiant Attack {Radiant}
-Shielding Smite: Charisma to Hit 2[w]+Cha and one ally gains a +3 to AC for one round
Dailies: I am going to list all three.
-On Pain of Death: a Short Ranged Cha based Attack, does good damage and has a continuing effect and still has an effect if you miss. [This one is ok, you don’t have to spend an action to get out a missile weapon.]
-Paladin’s Judgment: One Ally within 5 can Spend a Healing Surge and it is a 3[w] Attack. This is good for the Defending Paladin
-Radiant Delirium: Another Short Ranged Cha based Attack, you hit the target and he takes good damage and is dazed and is at a -2 to AC until he saves, miss he is still dazed for a round. The Rouge in your party will love you for this one and is good for both the Warrior or the Defender. {Radiant}

Feats: I will keep this one also from the Players Hand Book.
-Astral Fire: +1 Damage with Fire and Radiant Powers, You Breath Fire and are a Paladin.
-Dragonborn Frenzy: Good you are going to spend a lot of time bloodied.
-Durable: As a Paladin you will never have enough Healing Surges
-Enlarge Dragon Breath: this is great, but you don’t need it as 1st level, save it for a little later and remember you can choose what size you make it.
-Healing Hands: +3 to your Lay on Hands, this is real good at lower Levels
-Pelor’s Radiance: A Channel Divinity feat that give you a Turn Undead.
-Powerful Charge: If you are going to get mounted combat at some time TAKE THIS ONE, otherwise this is just a good aggressive power.
-Skill Focus [Heal]: This will make you a healing machine, best if there are no other “Healers” in the Party.
-Toughness: 5/10/15 Hit Points, great at 1st level, maybe think about retraining at a higher level.

Armor and Weapons
-Go with Scale Armor for now, no Skill Penalties and Good AC
-Heavy Shield {Check}

There are 5 Weapons you should consider.
-Scimitar: +2 to hit, 1d8 Damage and High Crit, you can inflict a heck of a lot of damage especially when you get a magical one. {Think Vicious}
Long Sword: +3 to hit, 1d8 Damage, Versatile. On the occasions that you do not have your shield with you the extra point of damage is ok.
-Khopesh [Adventures Vault]: +2 to hit, 1d8 Damage, Versatile and Brutal-1, Reroll any Ones you roll. The other thing to consider is it is a Heavy Blade and Axe, if you take Deadly Axe it becomes +2 to hit, 1d8 Damage, Versatile, Brutal-1 and High Crit
-Broad Sword [Adventures Valt]: see Long Sword +2 Hit, 1d10 Damage
-Battle Axe: +2 Hit, 1d10 Damage, Versatile

Good advice. I agree with just about all of it. Personally I think plate armor is a nice choice too, despite the skill penalties, since the extra AC does make a difference. If you're going sword & board, you want as high defenses as you can get.

D&D sure has changed since I was playing it regularly...

(Which, admittedly, was about 25 years ago!)

True
I have seen 3 camps on it.
-The 1st Camp is that it is a drastic change that has ruined the game.
-The 2nd Camp is that it is a drastic change that has made the game better.
-the 3rd Camp is this is the worst thing every and I will never even try it. This camp are some of the same people the when a Dragon Magazine Article was announce way back when that they were working on a 3rd edition of the game decided to hate it before there even a second article.

For better or for worse, I judge everything by the AD&D I grew up on.

So, of course I loved WHFRP, 1st edition! The old Gamma World... Some of the RPGs based in Michael Moorcock's worlds...

Good times!

The trick when playing 4th Ed DnD is to remember that the written rules only cover the "physics" of the game.

You have to bring in the roleplaying parts yourself, making a climb check doesn't count.

glory wrote:The trick when playing 4th Ed DnD is to remember that the written rules only cover the "physics" of the game.

You have to bring in the roleplaying parts yourself, making a climb check doesn't count.

Exactly. However, 4th edition discourages roleplaying. Gear is everything and creating a character with a set 'build' is a poor concept for a PnP RPG, as they are based on the imagination of the gaming group. I think what WotC tried to do with 4th edition was draw in the MMO crowd, which is why they made characters gear- and build-centric and added in things like 'aggro', which is a damn silly concept. They've made it very suitable for MMO players, but at the cost of the roleplaying veterans, which is why so many people still play 3.5.

I've only had a quick look through the books for 4th edition as I moved away from my old gaming group last year (we played a bit of 3.5) and I have to say that I quite liked the streamlining of some of the powers and feats etc.

And you need to remember that you can totally ruin your DM's plans for a quest with a bit of lateral thinking. That is always fun

Oh, and don't take ballance checks in plate or scale armour when you are a low level paladin. I got stuck on a narrow beam over a casm for about 3 hours in one game because I kept failing ballance checks

Above all, have fun and act to what you want your character to be.

My Revue of D&D 4th Edition

1st as I have been told Hasbro is the Reason we D&D 4th currently, WotC wanted to bring it out 2010, but Hasbro said, sooner. It was also redesigned for new players, which is why I think a lot of old players are having trouble with it. They Simplified it without Dummying it down.

Note on the Game Design: I looks like one of there goals was balance and I think they may have achieved nit.

Now onto the game.

The Same:
-Level
-6 Attributes
-3-18 base for each Attribute
-Roll a d20 and roll high

Gone
-Instant Death, fail 1 save and Die is history. [This is Good!]
-Spending 7 days back at the inn because you have no healing.
-Playing on Sofas, you need a table. [Actually it is just really hard now]
-Memorization, Magic Missile requires a to hit roll, but you can use it at will, once a round, every round.

The changes

The GM
-DM vs. Player is mostly gone, it is not about beating the party down and death traps. The focus is on Exploration, Challenging the Players and Story Telling.
-It is not Your World, it is You and your Players World. They make a big emphasis one getting together with your players and having them have a say on what is going on. This is not the same ass letting them take over your world, but the DM/Player relationship is supposed to be a team effort.
-They made it so you CAN plan your whole campaign taking the players from 1st to 30th level and then start the game.
-Game management has vastly improved. They have come up with a very mathematical way of handing out treasure and monster placement.
-They introduced the “Skill Challenge”. This is a way to have a challenging way to use your skills and get XP for it. They made a real emphasis on the skill challenge, this is why I think a lot of the older players have said it has become Roll-Playing, not Role-Playing. My group is having problems with wrapping there heads around this concept, but now you have a very good way to have a run and reward you players for convening the king that the goblin army is about to attack. [I have started to start the skill challenge and if the players can outwit the Skill Challenge, I give them their successes, the XP and move on.]

The Players
Races
-They have given all of the races good balanced set of powers and Attributes.
-Any Race can be Any Class, though some are just better than others at some.

Classes
They broke the Classes into 4 Major Categories and each has his place in the party. You do not need to have one of each, but it make life so much easier if you do.
-Controller [Wizard]: Gone are to 20d6 fireballs, but you don’t need it. You are the lord of the battlefield, think the Master of Ordinance with a WS-4. If a group of enemy is in your LoS you can hit them with something, there is even a small At-Will Mini-Fireball.
-Defender [Fighter/Paladin]: You defend the Party, you Charge into the front like whack your enemy hard and pin them down for the Striker to Deal with, think MEQs.
-Striker [Ranger/Rouge]: Strike Hast, Strike Fast. You focus on one enemy and put a blade[s] in his back and make it bleed, bad. Think Guardsman Marbo [and you can get the Demo Charge later in levels]
-Leader [Bard/Cleric]: Most of your leader types can lead from the front or back, but what they do best is make everyone work better. They give you some healing [some better than others] and help you hurt your enemies and make it hard for them to hurt you. Think Creed

I think this is enough for now.

I played a little bit of Mentzer-edition D&D and 1st edition AD&D as a kid, a lot of 2nd ed AD&D in the 90s (though with increasing numbers of house rules, over the years), a lot of 3.0 & 3.5 editions, and now 4th edition quite a bit since it came out, and I’ve enjoyed them all. 3rd ed was really the apex of the 1st edition concept of creating a more Simulationist game, rationalized and standardized about as far as you could take the original concept.

4th edition in some ways brings us back more to original D&D’s willingness to be more abstract and gamist, not trying to be realistic, particularly anywhere realism would make play less fun or slower. It is in some ways a tactical miniatures wargame too, but with a DM you can always fold, spindle and mutilate the rules as appropriate for your world and the stories you want to create. There is definitely the tendency to fall into playing it mostly as a combat game, particularly since the current rules for that are very clean-playing and well-written, and the combat system is probably the most fun it’s ever been. That said, any edition could easily fall into the same trap. It’s always been up to the group and the DM to make their game something more.

Agreed with Mannahin.

In addition, I have also had some problems with the "skill challenge" concept. It just seems like a very dull mechanic, even though the basic idea is sound. I don't understand why, after creating a dynamic and fun fighting system, they'd also introduce another challenge type that basically says: "Roll 20d20. If more than half of them are less than 10, you fail."

On a related note, I'm a bit disappointed by the Players Handbook. As you flick through it, it seems like the writers have forgotten to mention the whole point of the system, the roleplaying. Lots of rules for fighting etc., and then a single line of "oh yeah, this is a roleplaying game, let your imagination run wild".

My current big complaint is actually Fluff Based.

Using the Forgotten Realms Player Guide as an example.
-Spell-Plague:
They wrote it: This is how to use it.
Not: This is what happened a 100 years ago and now this is how to us it.

It took research to find out what happened with. They could have given a reasonable history in a page or so.

They also dropped a lot of Information on Monsters, that if I did not know what they were I would have now idea what they were.

They've definitely stripped down the fluff and descriptions. Sometimes this is a good thing, as it leaves the DM more free to define things. But I do tend to agree that (for my taste) they've gone a bit bare-bones.

Anpu42 wrote:They also dropped a lot of Information on Monsters, that if I did not know what they were I would have now idea what they were.

Yeah, they have definately gone a bit too far when you have to go online to find out what things are, what they do and how they behave, etc.

Dragonborn don't exist. Non-humans can't be paladins.

Incidentally, I'm about to start my first 4th ed campaign. I'm a Forgotten Realms fanatic, and will have none of this Spellplague, Dragonborn or Abeir nonsense.

I tend to DM off-table unless it's absolutely required, and 4th ed. doesn't necessarily require a tabletop at all. If you can describe the action adequately, there is no issue. I have, for a long time, used a small magnetic chessboard that I keep behind my screen or laptop, and use that to keep track of where people are.

It is very bare-bones indeed... I'm definitely still using the 3rd ed. FR supplements - the 4th ed ones are a waste of paper and money.

My general opinion on 4th edition was that is pointless, but worth a shot. It's actually good in that I'm introducing three of the players to the game (one has had a lot of RP experience but never played D&D), and the two others are relative beginners.

Arctik_Firangi wrote:Dragonborn don't exist. Non-humans can't be paladins.

Incidentally, I'm about to start my first 4th ed campaign. I'm a Forgotten Realms fanatic, and will have none of this Spellplague, Dragonborn or Abeir nonsense.

I tend to DM off-table unless it's absolutely required, and 4th ed. doesn't necessarily require a tabletop at all. If you can describe the action adequately, there is no issue. I have, for a long time, used a small magnetic chessboard that I keep behind my screen or laptop, and use that to keep track of where people are.

It is very bare-bones indeed... I'm definitely still using the 3rd ed. FR supplements - the 4th ed ones are a waste of paper and money.

My general opinion on 4th edition was that is pointless, but worth a shot. It's actually good in that I'm introducing three of the players to the game (one has had a lot of RP experience but never played D&D), and the two others are relative beginners.

1st.Go to your local bookstore
2nd.pick up and read 4th ed
3rd. dragonborns exist now

dont play 4th... they f'd it up... the old dnd was about the quests wheras the new one is more like WOW... i play 3.5 and my 7th level human ranger began as a kid... wheras ur paladin is already a hero at 1st lvl... it took 7 levels for Elegost to become awesome and now that he is, i have a story to him... even better... go Rifts, palladium is EPIC!!! i love dodging missiles

Elegost

I don't see too much of a problem with starting off fairly well powered. It is good to be able to start with a character you want to play.

In 3.5 I had a level 11 character that still was not what I wanted to really play. In 4, I would have been there at about level 3-4.

And because you start off well powered, it does not mean you can't make up your own background and stories. Hell, in the last version I had loads of background for my character even before we started playing.

A lot of the complaints that I have seen about 4th are that you are not being spoon fed fluff like you were in older versions.

The whole point of the game is to stretch your imagination.

You can always scale back your characters in 4th to represent starting off as a "regular joe" rather than already being a hero.

SilverMK2 wrote:A lot of the complaints that I have seen about 4th are that you are not being spoon fed fluff like you were in older versions.

The whole point of the game is to stretch your imagination.

I don't think it's as much a matter of spoonfeeding as it is of actually serving the dish.

DnD 4th ed is a very nice skirmish game, I enjoy the fighting encounters much more than in previous editions. At the same time, I can't help noticing that there are almost no rules whatsoever for doing things out of combat. Class abilities, skills, feats, magic items etc. are all 99% combat oriented (ther are always some exceptions). 4th ed. is, in my opinion, a terribly bad system for new roleplayers, since it has no way of introducing those players to the roleplaying bits.

glory wrote:4th ed. is, in my opinion, a terribly bad system for new roleplayers, since it has no way of introducing those players to the roleplaying bits.

I will have to take your word for it, as I never really got to play much 4th edition, as I moved away from my game group just after it came out.

It also depends on your group.
I have a mix of WGiD [War-Gamers in Denial], Roll-Players and Role-Players
The funny part is one of the WGiD complains that there is no RP and then when it starts he starts to ask "When are going to get into the next fight?"

I know were the “There is no more Role-Playing it’s now Roll-Playing” has come from, it’s the Skill Challenge. If you only run a Skill Challenge without any flexibility it is a true statement. Older groups I have talked to have stated that we have stated to do. We start the Skill Challenge and then if someone comes up with a way to end it quickly we do so and then move on.
For the new generation if they start out on there own will take some time to evolve from Roll to Role. The first time they negotiate with the town guard about the price and the Skill Challenge come up and one impatient character just plops down a 100 gp ruby to each guard when they are looking for 10 gp total that Skill Challenge will end and the group will go “AH HA we can Bend-Break the Rules and try to do this with out dice.