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6 months ago ::
Nov 28, 2012 - 10:56PM
#11
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Date Joined:
Nov 30, 2010
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Oh yes, i forgot the ritual rule. Ritual caster have 1 free ritual every odd level of their level or lower.
It's kinda awesome if you have bardic ritualist (by being a bard or bardic ritualist mc feat), because of the free bard ritual per day thing.
Rituals are very often overlooked on 4th edition (Essentials completly ignore them), but i actually found them to be quite awesome, too bad the campaing i have sorcerer adept themed drow is on standby...can't wait for level 1 for shortening a ritual cast once per day to 1/10 of cast time (you could do some rituals as a standard action or spending an entire turn's actions on it depending on DM)
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 4:40AM
#12
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Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2001
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I am enjoying reading other folks' houserules and will likely snarf a few of them for my own game after checking with my players. Especially Salla's ritual use approach! 
Here are the PHB essentia, in my opinion: - Three Basic Rules (p 11)
- Power Types and Usage (p 54)
- Skills (p178-179)
- Feats (p 192)
- Rest and Recovery (p 263)
- All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 4:42AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Oct 24, 2001
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I don't allow Essentials material. There are just too many books to keep track of and I'd rather not have to double check a dozen books to make sure a character is legit.
I fnd this odd. Does this mean you don't trust your players?
In my game, I don't double-check anything. I ask them to let me have a copy of their character sheet only because I use it to tailor encounters to give PCs a chance to show off some of their more subtle items, powers, or abilities.
Here are the PHB essentia, in my opinion: - Three Basic Rules (p 11)
- Power Types and Usage (p 54)
- Skills (p178-179)
- Feats (p 192)
- Rest and Recovery (p 263)
- All of Chapter 9 [Combat] (p 264-295)
A player needs to read the sections for building his or her character -- race, class, powers, feats, equipment, etc. But those are PC-specific. The above list is for everyone, regardless of the race or class or build or concept they are playing.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 5:32AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Jul 17, 2003
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Looks like our group has been far more extreme than most. We've gone through a couple of different resource management systems (mostly because we tend to only have one combat per adventuring day).
First we changed daily powers into a "you can only use one per encounter" and from there moved onto a system that has encounter uses of "attack" and "utility" powers with daily powers costing two uses of an encounter power.
The next step we're taking in this regard is adjusting the pool values so that your powers have different costs based on their level (right now a level 13 encounter power costs just as much to use as a level 3 encounter power which leads to a lot of spam of our most powerful attacks); we're playing with 1/tier for encounters and 2/tier for dailies (or perhaps 2/tier for encounter and 5/tier for daily).
The biggest issue in making these changes has been handling additional powers (ex. leader healing, theme powers, powers gained from multi-class feats) and the lack of powers on some classes (psionics and some of the E-classes). Right now we're actually thinking about just standardizing the "mana/endurance" value across the board (with class feature powers like healing word tracked seperately) and letting any additional powers gained via theme, feats and so forth provide a greater breadth of options rather than more uses.
* * * *
Practically tame by comparison is that we took the values from the expected feat tax, inherant/enhancement, item and masterwork armor bonuses to attack, damage and defenses and put them onto our own advancement table with the increases spread out a bit more evenly so that characters get closer to +1/level for their attacks and defenses (as opposed to getting +2 at some levels and +0 at others).
Since we all use homemade character sheets (based on the efficient layout of the 4e monster blocks; most paragon tier characters can easily fit onto a single page) we can design the characters in the character builder equipped with non-magical weapons and armor and then, when filling in our own sheets, just add the appropriate values to each attack, damage roll, and defense.
This has served to make magic items rare and special and the most treasured ones now tend to NOT be weapons or armor. Indeed, our paragon tier game has gone old school in that our characters have become lords and ladies. Our primary and most treasured magic items are actually a series of Pouches of Shared Acquisition, which we have used to set up an effective mail service between key points in our realm (one of each of the two pouch sets hangs on a wall in our keep where a hireling is tasked with sorting the correspondence out and putting it the appropriate destination pouch) and one pouch remains with the party so that we can be informed of and respond to any issues which may come up in running our kingdom.
* * * *
Beyond those two main changes its mostly been that we've used home-brew settings created via "Dawn of Worlds" (ours have ranged from fairly standard, to one where half-elves, half-orcs, and half-dwarves dominated and humans, elves, dwarves, and orcs were nearly extinct, to another which is practically a post-apocalyptic nightmare where civilization has literally been dragged back into the stone age and the few remaining gods/primordials now exist only as physical avatars because their true forms and their astral/elemental realms were utterly destroyed in the cataclysm) and the occassional home-brew race (most notably the... thing... we're calling Blight Pixies).
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 7:16AM
#15
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Date Joined:
Apr 14, 2010
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3. The only power sources are Martial, Arcane, and Psionic.
Interesting. How do you handle divine and primal characters? And what's the reasoning behind this houserule? (just curious)
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 7:32AM
#16
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Date Joined:
Sep 18, 2012
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I don't allow Essentials material. There are just too many books to keep track of and I'd rather not have to double check a dozen books to make sure a character is legit.
I fnd this odd. Does this mean you don't trust your players?
In my game, I don't double-check anything. I ask them to let me have a copy of their character sheet only because I use it to tailor encounters to give PCs a chance to show off some of their more subtle items, powers, or abilities.
It's not that I don't trust my current players... There are a number of reasons.
First, if I include Essentials content, the game is too bloated. Some of my players prefer having fewer available options because it makes decisions easier. (Which I find strange, but understandable.)
Second, I don't have most of the Essentials books, so I can't double check anything. And my players have a tendency to misinterpret powers. Some of them, anyway. In fact, I have one player who insists that I stat her character for her, regardless of system. (She has low self esteem, so she always assumes she'll screw something up. Even though she's one of my better players.)
Third, while none of my current players cheat, I've been in a few games (and run one) where there were players that did, in fact, cheat. I was in a 4e campaign with a guy who got away with rolling his stats, getting numbers significantly higher than he should have, while everyone else was forced to use 22 point buy. (This man is also the reason I despise the Warden class on a personal level.*) This same player was also in a Mutants & Masterminds campaign I ran, where he made Charisma his dump stat and then proceeded to pressure me into never requiring him to roll any social skills, since he was hosting Gametable. (I love online gaming, since I type better than I talk, but it does have pitfalls...)
*In a party of seven or so, his character made half the group irrelevant. I recall one session where only he, the Sorcerer's player and I showed up. I was playing a very unoptimized Brawler Fighter. The Sorcerer spent the majority of the fight unconscious, my character managed to beat ONE enemy and the Warden easily killed everything else. At level 3~4. Of course, the DM also gave him an artifact axe that was better than anything the rest of the party had...
My opinion of the Warden was further lowered when a different player told me about an incredibly game breaking Warden build that uses a hammer, essentially doing more damage than most strikers pretty much every round of combat. And they kept telling me about this build every other day. It became very hard to tolerate the class. Though I still allow the class to be played, I am incredibly paranoid about it. And none of my current group have actually wanted to play it.
And I wouldn't have minded him replacing everyone in combat if he didn't also turn every non-combat scene into something about his character. In the 4e campaign (my first 4e campaign, in fact, and the first time I'd played any roleplaying game in years. Again, it was online. Not a great first impression) several of the other players, who were friends of mine, confided in me that they didn't want to play anymore pretty much solely because they felt irrelevant. Then came the M&M campaign I ran, where the warden's player did the same thing. In fact, past the first couple of sessions, nobody even got involved until initiative was rolled.
...Incidentally, my love of M&M 2e died with that campaign. It's a testiment to how much I enjoy 4e that it remains my system of choice.
Gunmage, a homebrew arcane striker. (Heroic Tier playtest ready.) GDocs link. (More up to date.)
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 8:10AM
#17
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- Forum Guide
- Hero Craftsman Gold Medalist
- Master Dungeon Master
Date Joined:
Jun 23, 2005
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I don't use XP. Instead, I level people up when I feel it appropriate storywise. Otherwise, I stick to RAW. (Except for my family game, where we use inherent bonuses.)
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 8:54AM
#18
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Date Joined:
Jun 13, 2010
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i have a blog with a lot of my ideas. this thread is interesting to me bc recent posts have coincidentally dealt with inherent bonuses and ritual use. i like to incorporate a lot of classic edition flavor and mechanics into 4e.
regarding inherent bonuses
frothsof4e.blogspot.com/2012/11/in-searc...
this is about encouraging ritual use
frothsof4e.blogspot.com/2012/11/encourag...
Hey Frothsoth, great work on the articles. The stronghold thing you discuss makes a lot of sense to me. As you said, high level expectations are different but it´s a valid option to have strongholds as options, fot that you have to change the basic economy of the game. I like the henchmen and hireling article as well, those are very nice ideas. I think your ideas are similar to the ones presented in Mordenkainen's Emporium where they tried to bring those things back to the game. Those are very nice options, I´m starting to use a lot. ... maybe they are in the wrong book ... they should have done a whole new book covering this stuff to 4E, old school low magic settings, strongholds and henchman... The mordenkainen's magnificent emporium seem too much like magic items exclusive, and I guess lots of people didn't even look at it. magical items with stories is also covered in the MME, pretty much pointing to the direction DDN is going.
Anyway your articles are pretty cool, keep it up.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 8:55AM
#19
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Date Joined:
Dec 22, 2010
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In my online game we do the same, we level up between sessions (every character at the same time) if the characters have reached a suitable point.
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6 months ago ::
Nov 29, 2012 - 8:55AM
#20
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Date Joined:
Jun 13, 2010
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..."window.parent.tinyMCE.get('post_content').onLoad.dispatch();" contenteditable="true" />On the player's side, I also give out an Expertise feat for free. Also, I tend to make improvised actions slightly more potent than you'd expect from DMG page 42 alone.
interested on that, can you give some examples?
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