Tag: 4e

July 24, 2008

4e: another playtest report

Last night was session 2 of Keep on the Shadowfell, and it featured an assault on the kobold lair. I toned things down to account for the fact that we only had three PCs (Morgan Ironclaw, dragonblood paladin; Bloodaxe Axebeard, dwarf cleric; and Owen, human wizard). They followed the Wyrmpriest who’d escaped from the ambush. I adjusted the battle map...

July 23, 2008

4e and the UPS

Well before 4e was released, I was musing about what I wanted to see and began sketching out what I dubbed the Unified Power System. Now that 4e is out and I have played around with it a bit, the appeal of the UPS is really taking hold. It forms a framework for most of those bits I’m dissatisfied with...

July 9, 2008

4e: Rethinking the Dragonborn

The Dragonborn are a new PC race in 4e D&D. There was a quasi-race called the Dragonborn in 3.5 (introduced in Races of the Dragon). These were members of other races who were called upon by Bahamut and answered his call, becoming transformed into draconic creatures who hunted evil dragons. The 4e Dragonborn aren’t like this. Instead, the new Dragonborn...

July 3, 2008

4e: Wizard

One of the things that bugs me about the wizard is how non-combat magic is an entirely separate system than combat magic. Here is a very quick draft of a possible ‘fix’ that I thought up about 10 minutes ago: Feat: Utility MageHeroic TierPrerequisite: Wis 13, wizardBenefit: When you take an extended rest and you have access to your ritual...

July 3, 2008

4e: Running the game

Last night, we began playing through Keep on the Shadowfell. I was running the game. Pat was playing Bloodaxe Axebeard, a dwarf cleric. Jeff was playing Owen, a human wizard. Doug was playing Morgan Ironclaw, a Dragonborn Paladin. We only made it through the first two fights… there was a lot of chatting and discussion, which is to be expected...

June 28, 2008

4e: GSL weirdness

The Game System License has a what appears to be a big hole in it. Certain monsters, such as the Beholder and the Displacer Beast, (and possibly other non-monster things) are excluded from the SRD. Before 4e, these things were considered Product Identity (despite the fact that D&D’s claim on the displacer beast is tenuous) and were not included in...

June 28, 2008

Five monsters for the price of one…

I was thinking about 4e’s encounter design, and something hit me that may well be applicable in several sorts of games. In 4e, the base assumption is that you’ll have one foe per character. This is modified by a bunch of things – minions count as multiple foes, elite creatures count as two, and things like that. I find this...

June 25, 2008

4e: Game prep

(Note to my players: you can read this. It won’t have any spoilers.) Preparing Keep on the Shadowfell for running three players through seems fairly straightforward. Cracking open the Dungeon Master’s Guide, it looks like the basic idea of encounter design is to pick an xp total for an encounter and then spend that xp budget on monsters and traps....

June 19, 2008

4e stuff

It looks like I may run Keep on the Shadowfell for Jeff, Doug, and Pat. I’m pretty stoked about it, though I am slightly concerned about how three PCs will fare in an adventure designed for five. This is a really good summary of the paradigm shift between 3e and 4e. If you haven’t read it, do so. This is...

June 18, 2008

4e: GSL

So, Wizards released the GSL. I’m not sure I see why anyone would use it. I haven’t read through it in detail, but it doesn’t seem to actually grant any worthwhile rights. The OGL was arguably worthwhile. You agreed to abide by WotC’s restrictions. In return, you got to use a whole lot of content more-or-less as you wish. The...