D&D 4E My first taste of 4e, and what it means for 5e.

[Imaro]

I hate to say "maybe your DM sucked," but seriously, if you can't explain 4E to someone, maybe your DM sucked? Everything you need to know about a power is written on the card, and the Daily/Encounter/At-Will paradigm couldn't be easier.

I don't think anyone has made the claim that 4e can't be explained to new players, so I'm not sure where you're getting that from. I also note that in your example you had two players + a DM who had 4e experience, so it's not really a case of all new players and only the DM knowing the rules and trying to teach the entire group as they play. IMO, 4e is difficult not impossible to teach in that situation and I don't think it has anything to do with being a DM that "sucks". Different strokes for different folks I guess.

 

[B.T.]

FYI, I'll be playing again this Friday, so I'll keep people updated on this thread.

Okay. Brash Strike is really good; the +2 attack and +Con to damage are a pretty significant offensive boost.

Wait, since when do I get my Con bonus to damage? Also, my character has 12 Con even though he's a dwarf, and I'm pretty sure that the numbers on the sheet are wrong, now that I look at it. (20 Strength but 12 Con and 11 Wis? What.) Maybe I'll pester the DM into letting me write out the character myself.

 

[D'karr]

FYI, I'll be playing again this Friday, so I'll keep people updated on this thread.

Wait, since when do I get my Con bonus to damage? Also, my character has 12 Con even though he's a dwarf, and I'm pretty sure that the numbers on the sheet are wrong, now that I look at it. (20 Strength but 12 Con and 11 Wis? What.) Maybe I'll pester the DM into letting me write out the character myself.

Pregens over the years have been riddled with problems with their numbers. Some are fine and some totally suck.

If I was you, I'd bring my own 1st level character with your own "flair". I've never liked playing pregens, it doesn't give me the feel of "my character."

If this is D&D Encounters that is the basic policy, bring your own, or use a provided pregen. However, this might be a D&D Encounters adventure run outside of D&D Encounters which changes the dynamic. The DM might be doing his own thing. Most of the pregens you mentioned initially have been out of play circulation for over a year, and Binwin was never an approved D&D Encounters pregen. So it's entirely possible that these are pregens created by someone else.

On your question about Brash Strike, that is one of the benefits of using an axe, hammer or mace with that power.

Weapon: If you’re wielding an axe, a hammer, or a mace, the attack deals extra damage equal to your Constitution modifier.

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[Siberys]

That additional damage might have already been worked in to the character, FWIW.

 

[Herschel]

Another thing I noticed in 4e that 5e needs to avoid: healing doesn't matter. Dropping to negatives in 4e isn't scary, especially not when the healer is nearby and he can set you up with a healing surge as a minor action and get you in the game. Generally, when a PC drops, I like it to be a tense situation: you're down, and there's a chance you're not getting up. While 3e's system wasn't great for various reasons, it worked a whole heck of a lot better than 4e's. There wasn't really any tension for a player going unconscious in 4e--it was just assumed the ardent would use her encounter power to get the player back in the game, and the real risk was action denial.

Healing still matters a lot, you may not have seen it though because of the Encounters format and low-level play. When area attacks and ongoing damage and the like start showing up more often it gets to be bigger in a hurry. The math is also tighter so action denial is HUGE. Leaders also only have their two heals/encounter early on and sometimes for quite a while. When the party gets caught in a good blast and the defender is doing his job those heals go quick.

 

[D'karr]

Healing still matters a lot, you may not have seen it though because of the Encounters format and low-level play. When area attacks and ongoing damage and the like start showing up more often it gets to be bigger in a hurry. The math is also tighter so action denial is HUGE. Leaders also only have their two heals/encounter early on and sometimes for quite a while. When the party gets caught in a good blast and the defender is doing his job those heals go quick.

Yes, because of its very nature, D&D Encounters play can be very compartmentalized. You could bring a different character each week if you wanted, essentially eliminating any need to "recharge". There are some artificialities to this particular format.

The rogue was down (I gather unconscious) and taking ongoing damage. If the DM glosses over that condition when the combat ends, it "cheapens" the play. I've seen this done several times, and it changes what could have been a "tense" moment into nothing.



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[Victim]

FYI, I'll be playing again this Friday, so I'll keep people updated on this thread.

Wait, since when do I get my Con bonus to damage? Also, my character has 12 Con even though he's a dwarf, and I'm pretty sure that the numbers on the sheet are wrong, now that I look at it. (20 Strength but 12 Con and 11 Wis? What.) Maybe I'll pester the DM into letting me write out the character myself.

Here's Brash Strike:

Brash Strike Fighter Attack 1
With a battle cry, you throw your whole body behind your
attack.
At-Will ✦ Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Target: One creature
Attack: Strength + 2 vs. AC
Hit: 1[W] + Strength modifier damage.
Increase damage to 2[W] + Strength modifier at 21st level.
Weapon: If you’re wielding an axe, a hammer, or a mace,
the attack deals extra damage equal to your Constitution
modifier.
Effect: You grant combat advantage to the target until the
start of your next turn.

It seems like poorly made, incorrect pregens are a problem for the Encounters line, considering how many characters you had to discard.

Depending on your level though, that 12 Con is actually a real possibility. Starting with a 18 before mods is really expensive.

 

[B.T.]

I'll talk to the DM about it, then. The attack damage isn't really formatted properly, I think...for some reason, Cleave does more damage than my normal melee attack, so I'm pretty sure that whoever did the sheet did it wrong. There's also another player who is playing a knight, and he seemed to enjoy the stance mechanic (he preferred Hammer Hands, which is basically Tide of Iron). I'll be curious as to his opinions on not having daily powers.

One thing I know I'm going to miss as a fighter is a decent ranged ability. I do wish we were a bit higher level so I could experiment with some of the other fighter powers, though.

Question: can I freely take powers as a fighter from Martial Power II / III, or is there some special restriction on them?

 

[D'karr]

Question: can I freely take powers as a fighter from Martial Power II / III, or is there some special restriction on them?

Talk to the DM about that. D&D Encounters, for a while now, has been "restricted" to Essentials and the particular book tie-in source (Neverwinter, HoS, etc.) However, since it seems like the DM might be doing his own thing you really need to find out what "restrictions", if any, he is implementing.

 

[Tony Vargas]

It seems like poorly made, incorrect pregens are a problem for the Encounters line, considering how many characters you had to discard.

It sounds like the DM just kept every pre-gen from every season (the Thri-Kreen is from the Dark Sun season, for instance, which also meant it had an extra encounter power). The first couple of seasons, the pre-gens were notoriously bad. They made very sub-optimal choices (my personal guess is that it was intentional, so that when the players bought the books and made their own characters they could easily be better than the pregens), and contained a lot of errors and omissions.

The thrust of Encounters shifted slightly with Essentials and the pregens got better (there's really not a lot to be done as far as optimizing some E-classes goes, anyway). They also stopped making new ones for each season.