[Interest Check] 4th Edition D&D

[Jeramiahh]

As long since promised, this is my tentative posting for a 4th edition D&D game. My book FINALLY arrived earlier today, and I spent the evening poring over my PHB, and plan to move onto the DMG and MM in the next few days.

That being said, I'd like to run a game, test out my knowledge of the rules in an actual environment, and have some fun along the way. This will be a small party, 3-5 players. Some D&D experience is expected, and, obviously, a copy of the books (.pdf or hardcover) is required.

The first, and most important question, though, is what to play. I do NOT want to start at first level; it's been done to hell and back, between the previews and KotS... I want to see how higher level gameplay runs, so all of the games I suggest will start at at least 5th level, though go no higher than 17th. I don't want to touch epic, not yet.

Also, if you're familiar with World of Warcraft, some of these ideas might sound... familiar. I'm good, but I can't create a bunch of adventures out of whole cloth on the fly. Besides, the WoW bosses translate to 4e encounters really nicely.

1. The Haunted Mine (Mid-Heroic): An old, recently abandoned mine has had a number of strange happenings, lately; strange lights, figures seen lurking in the darkness, disappearances. Rumors of an evil that might threaten the land for miles around lurking in its depths have called heroes forth.

2. Castle in the Forest (High-Heroic): Legends say that, many years ago, the mad wizard Argual conducted bizarre experiments in his hilltop castle, deep in the the woods. The castle lay abandoned for many years, and a community grew up around it, but in recent months, things have been seen within the castle, and strange monsters have stalked the woods. Are you brave enough to face the mad wizard's lair?

3. Cursed Tower (Low-Paragon): The land around the nameless tower has been cursed for centuries; ghosts wander the land, howling for vengance and the blood of the living. Stories of even darker, more twisted things within have been rumored for years... along with legendary treasures.

4. The Dragon's Aerie (Mid-Paragon): High atop the Wyrmsmoke Mountains lies the lair of a powerful black dragon. For years, he's been collecting the local tribes, assembling their best warriors, and preparing to launch a war against the human lands. Can you penetrate his lair and end his threat... before it's too late?

5. Temple of the Blood God (High Paragon): The prophecies are beginning to come true, and the signs of the end times draw near. In the ruins of an ancient empire, powerful priests work a forgotten ritual to resurrect a god of blood and slaughter, who threatens all the people of this world. He nearly destroyed the world the last time he came into it... will he succeed now?

[schnookums]

Heh, will these be normal games, or will there be an Elliquiy twist to them?

[Jeramiahh]

Not sure, yet; depends on the interests of the players and such. I'm tempted to make them 'normal', if only to have a game in every category, but I'm not going to rule anything out at this point.

I'm sorely disappointed by the lack of interest; I was hoping this'd be a nice, big game. =(

[OldSchoolGamer]

The problem is Fourth Edition...I don't know about everyone else on here, but to me it evokes a great big "meh."

[Jeramiahh]

See, to that, I remember a wonderful analogy someone came up with: 4e is like green eggs and ham. Everyone looks at it, and goes 'meh', at first, but when you actually try it, you find it's fantastic.

I'd post the exact quote, but the forum's down, at the moment, but someone listed a number of mid-level warlock encounter powers: Switch players with an allied player. Close burst 1 and teleport 3 squares away. Gain concealment against any enemy you damaged this turn. Individually, none of these sound that interesting, right? Tell that to the guy who swapped places with the fighter who'd been completely surrounded, blasted all of the enemies for a good amount of damage, then completely vanished, a distance away, leaving the enemy hurt, confused, and without anything to hit. 4e's not about what each, individual power does, but how they synergize, in ways 3e never came close to.

[kongming]

I expect to be praised for the fact that I won't slag 4E off in this post. Seriously, if President Bush can be praised for tying his own shoelaces, and Mearls and Collins are hailed as gods for every thing they do (see: ENWorld, also known as "Please, WotC, let me fellate you!") then I deserve praise for resisting the urge to say something bad about it.

That being said, I'll defy all logic and say "If you need help getting players for this, I'll join."

Partly so I can say "See, look, I even played the game to back my statements up." Partly because it offers a new opportunity in optimisation and playing with numbers. Partly because I'm sure that Jeramiahh can make it fun no matter what. Putting levels aside, the last two ideas you put down sound the most interesting to me.

But consider anyone else before me, because you know where my enthusiasm on the system lies.

[Hikari]

Umm.  I would like to play, but I don't hate 4E...  is that going to be a problem?

I'm still waiting for my books, but they shipped on the 1st, so it shouldn't be very long.  Hopefully, today!

[Jeramiahh]

Yeah, that's the biggest thing; I know I can make this fun for everyone involved. I've got high hopes for 4e, because the more I read it, the more *I* think, "Wow, this looks fun." Then again, the style of it appeals to me, the high-adventure, cinematic style of the game. It's not realistic, it's not incredibly complicated. It's just fun.

EDIT: I'm definitely looking for people! It may be a little bit before I get it started, still plowing my way through the books. About half done with the DMG; the MM should be just skimming, thankfully.

Any votes on a particular game, those that are interested?

[kongming]

Well, you already have my vote: either of the last two. Not entirely sure what type of character I'll try, perhaps a Laser Cleric or Starlock.

What? Of course fancy names have been given to character types!

[DreadD]

I'll show up, I even have all of the core books in .pdf form ^_^

[OldSchoolGamer]

Well, you already have my vote: either of the last two. Not entirely sure what type of character I'll try, perhaps a Laser Cleric or Starlock.

What? Of course fancy names have been given to character types!

Ah...laser cleric.  Is that the one with "plasma rifle, 40-watt range?"  ;D

[Jeramiahh]

And people bitched about the new cleric not being as awesome as the old cleric. I swear, that class has gone through hell and back, from 2e's "Who has to play the cleric so the rest of us can have fun?" to 3e's "Who gets to play the cleric and have fun?" to 4e's "The cleric isn't Jesus with a machinegun and battle armor, anymore!"

[OldSchoolGamer]

In my 2E games, clerics were pretty respectable.  I usually ran my own pantheons, gave clerics some additional powers.  Not ridiculous powers, but some additional powers.  They certainly were evolved well beyond the "walking Band-Aid" level.

[kongming]

Ty:
Nah, basically there are two types of Cleric in 4E:
Laser Cleric (side effect: good at healing) who mainly zaps people for Radiant damage from a range (hence the name).
Beatdown Cleric, who hit people hard and grant their Strength modifier as a bonus for other people to attack. At will.

Likewise there are two paladin types (Tron (like a laser cleric, but in melee) and Grind (the best and making enemies sit still and die)), one Wizard type (Orb Wizard), two Rangers ("Cascade of Blades" and "Haha, I have range over 6 and most monsters don't"), three Warlocks (feylock (generally Tieflings), starlock (the best kill-harvesting ability, but the most annoying stat requirements) and Inferlock (never Tieflings)) and so on.

Jera:
Don't worry, the Beatdown Cleric makes the Warlord useless as a "Leader" by dishing out the best bonuses (to-hit bonuses are rare and valuable), and the Laser Cleric is one of the better damage dealers (while also being the only build that can possibly afford to take the risk and do the disease-removing ritual - and without that ritual, you will basically never recover from one - fucked up skill challenges for the lose!)

So while some may bitch that they can't do everything, I'm confident in saying they can still pick 1-2 roles to excel at.

[OldSchoolGamer]

Almost sounds like a pencil-and-paper version of Gauntlet.

[Jeramiahh]

Yeah, the last thing I read in the DMG today was diseases. They are NOT a joke, anymore. Some of them are downright scary. Of course, your heal check only has to hit the level of the disease for a DC for the Cure Disease ritual to 'work', and you can have people aid with the check; assuming four allies with (minimum) a 50% success, you can get a +4-8 bonus, on top of the base of half your level... even without a stat modifier, an untrained check will still cure most diseases of your level without difficulty.

Of course, by 'work' I mean 'not kill the victim outright'.

[Hikari]

Er, well...  in lieu of such matters (cleric issues, not diseases), how about something more constructive?  Like brainstorming character concepts, or something like that?

I'm pretty eager to try out a lot of the stuff, so I'm open to different character classes.  I think the only ones I wouldn't want to play right now are Wizard and Cleric.  An Eladrin or Tiefling might be interesting, I think.

[kongming]

Ah yes, character concepts.

Well, if you want to be a Cleric, I'm happy to play a Warlock (probably dragonborn, maybe tiefling or half-elf) or perhaps even a Tron Paladin (dragonborn). If you decide to be a Wizard, on the other hand, I'm happy to play a Cleric (elf Laser Cleric or dragonborn/minotaur Beatdown Cleric, based on whether Jera allows the "MM races as playable" variant).

So I'm not too worried, really - there are plenty of options there.

[Jefepato]

Huh.  I totally missed this post.

As you of all people should know, Jeramiahh, I have some posts to catch up on, but if I manage the backlog I'd be interested here.

I'd like to play a fighter (because I'm already doing rogue and wizard in other games).  Ideas #4 and #5 sound the most interesting, and not just because they're the highest-level.

[Marie Reynolds]

Well I Might be interested in a 4th ed might as well give it a chance

[Jeramiahh]

I've yet to even crack the cover on the MM, so I'll have to reserve judgment on that point for a few days, KM. I'd prefer to keep it to the PHB races; not because I've heard the MM races are unbalanced, but because it's easier to work with what the rules are designed to support.

So far, that's two votes for the highest level games; I'll admit, they ARE the most interesting ones. The others are fairly cliche, although the descriptions hardly do #2 and 3 justice; #2 was the one I originally had in mind when I went to post this, but decided to open up all five, instead. #3's the one with the most 'uniqueness' potential; the inside of the tower starts to get REALLY strange. I'd even plan to use the secret area that was cut from the game because it was way too goddamn creepy. The levels for them were chosen carefully; each represents exactly what that level range should represent, the small scale at the early levels, the national or world scale as you approach epic.

If I were voting, I'd go for #3 or #4. =P Looks like we've got interest, so I'll start taking other votes on adventure and potential characters. Once the adventure's decided, I'll slap up the character creation guidelines.

[schnookums]

I'd lean towards 3 or 4 myself, but I'd be happy to play in any of these myself

[kongming]

Heh, so the votes mostly seem to be "3 or 4" and "4 or 5". Well, I guess we get to try taking on the dragon...

Oh, and the minotaur thing is no big deal. I suggested it because I can see them handling the role of "I hit people. Hard. This impresses everyone else so much that they join in." very well, but a big, beefy dragon-person can also do this just fine.

Besides, Dragonborn are also good for the role of Bullysaurus (it's even named that way because they're the best at it), and I can guarantee we'll be wanting at least one bullysaurus in the party.

Bullysaurus: the new Diplomancer. As soon as they're bloodied, make an Intimidate check. If you beat their Will save (there's a small penalty for being in combat at the time) then they surrender, saving you half the length of combat (the worst half, too, as it's the half that happens when you've already run out of encounter powers).

Yes, I am determined to have everyone using my strange terms by the end of the year, just like everyone I talk 3E with understands "Diplomancy", "Abuse Magic Device", "stormtroopering" "five foot swindle" and all the rest. I will find any opportunity possible to throw one of these terms about.

[Marie Reynolds]

Id be up for playing an Eladrin Warlord if that is alright.

[Zaer Darkwail]

I am intrested. Dint have 4th edition books but I am have created three 4th edition chars and playing in three games over at Rpol.

Anycase instead of classes we need speak of Leader, Defender, Striker and Controller in terms. We need one each and preferably two strikers so it makes up 4-5 man party.

Clerics&Warlords; Leaders (warlord knows some control based powers)
Fighters&Paladins; Defenders
Warlock, Rogue, Ranger; Strikers (but lock can be good controller also)
Wizard; Controller

But note that all these roles do damage (leaders, defenders and controllers) but in less extended specialization. I am playing a tiefling (infernal) warlock (doh, went straight to archtyphical version, and ended up only only tiefling in 14 man game :P), tiefling (tactical) warlord (I like tieflings) and half-elf paladin of Bane.

The encylopedia is handy when picking powers and if you know general gaming rules in general then you can get far without the books (as system is plain easy).

Anycase I have got idea to try out one more role where tiefling were said to be good at; Rogues. So a tiefling rogue is in mind what I would try out and it differs from other classes played so far. Oh, I vote for 4&5 adventure ideas (4 especially).