The Gaming Den

Except that minions in 4E aren't total crap. They pose the same offensive threat as any other equal level creature, and are just as hard to hit with attacks. Well like anything they're by level. A level 1 minion against a level 10 character is in fact crap. Even a level 10 minion is pretty weak, it...

Why the fuck do we care enough about a fight between a kitty and a bunny to afford them special status? Isn't it enough that on every attack by the cat there's a high chance of the bunny dying, and on every attack by the bunny there's a very low chance of the kitty dying? Or do you really want a no...

Thanks for contributing, everyone! I don't get why "power-gamers" and rules-lawyers are such negative terms; I'd want someone in my group to know the rules so that the group doesn't get stagnated over some obscure event. Power gamer isn't always negative but rules lawyer is negative becau...

Having the system completely fails too. The best example of exactly this type of thing is a lot of recent computer games, particularly Bioware and Obsidian lately. There are certain decision trees, presented as options, that lead to the exact same result. You can say yes, no, try to intimidate, blu...

Psychic Robot wrote: However, given that the wizard now doesn't actually burn targets with a fireball spell, I suppose it's okay. (The wizard actually rattles off a snappy zinger when he casts it, crippling his opponents' self-esteem until they go off and die in a corner.)

Huh? What do you mean by that?

The look on your players faces, who were just 3 sessions ago completely delerious that they got a belt of +2 Con, when they see a pile of gold worth at least 10 million GP is priceless. They just got frustrated and kicked the gold as if it were shit. I never really got why people think gold in the ...

At which point you're just better off role-playing the social encounter rather than bothering with the craps game. Thats the problem I have with it. Rather than supplement the RP aspect of the game, it kills it, hides the body and replaces it with a craps game. Well I tend to have that complaint wi...

Only if the DM makes them minions. Which is an indictment in itself, since it means the town's kids can totally kill the adult population with thrown rocks and go play out a 'Star Trek Children's Planet' episode. I did forget the opportunity attacks against each target thing. But still, I'm just no...

This is one of the big failures of 4e. Everything interesting has been sucked out, and you just roll the damn dice. Well, in its defense a social encounter in 4E can be potentially a lot more interesting than a social encounter in 3.5 (where it's just a matte rof diplomacy check -> done). Most DMs ...

What if you understand them, but the GM hates them and has banned them, and you agree with him? :P Anything where you're nerfing stuff, and the DM knows enough to nerf stuff, is not casual at all. Chances are if your DM felt the need to nerf stuff, it's anything but casual. Casual games tend to hav...

I was just explaining to my sister that it doesn't even matter whether you can or cannot do that. The reason being that they're all shit , and there's practically no difference. Honestly I don't think so. The high level stuff is actually fairly decent. I mean stoneskin is crazy awesome for 4E, bett...

If, you know, they're stupid enough to stand there and take it. If they take two run actions, it can't actually catch and kill them- it will catch one or two with opportunity attacks, but the rest of the village survives. Maybe it can run down a few more later, but really, if everybody scatters, 95...

I'm still confused; does a "casual" player not care about game balance? Is that what you meant? Casual is pretty much a game where the characters aren't particularly optimized. Probably if your group doesn't understand how the polymorph mechanics work and have never used them, you're play...

The Tome of Battle wasn't terrible. If you have a casual group it actually works out pretty well and makes fighter types a lot more interesting to play.

There's really nothing different between these skill challenges and playing craps, except that craps is fun. Yeah, that seems to be the biggest problem with the 4E skil challenge system. It's not really like figuring out a puzzle or anything, there's no tactics. It's just pointless rolling. The sys...

Also it seems that there's no longer any way to upgrade existing magic items. So once you make an item, you just melt it into residuum or you sell it for 1/5 price. But you can't actually upgrade it. So you're going to lose a lot of gold this way, and having signature weapons is apparently not allow...

The thing still has int as a non-ability so it's easily tricked. Even a simple illusion to look like it's creator or something would work. The hard thing is getting close to it, so basically you'd want some kind of illusion you can teleport somewhere. A remote illusion that acts as clairvoyance/clai...

2. Nerf that stupid Orb combo, and give the wizard some more (non-broken) shit to make up for that loss. I think just capping the orb at at most -4 or -5 modifier should do it. It's main crazy breaking point is when you start getting really high wisdom scores at high/epic level, and is a good examp...

A party could enter, fire, and backtrack. However, the enemy side can just as easily stay inside where it's safe and wait beside the door; as they're not required to leave to win the encounter (players being the aggressor). Yup, pretty much the monster sits around a corner and waits for you to come...

I don't know about that. You should not have to back up since everyone and their mother gets around 15 "push back you foe x number of squares" type powers. Against multiple melee brutes casting ray of frost could mean keeping one of them out of range for a turn. Which is still kinda bad, ...

And Ray of Frost is a Ranged 10 attack which drops enemy speed to 2 for one round. As long as the rest of your party is made out of other ranged characters (Laser Clerics, Rangers, Warlocks, or Wizards), you can do your whole attacking thing without ever closing to melee at all. That's a total win....

I've always hated alignment detection, because it screws with any political game you may want to run, and is like a total substitute for sense motive in a lot of situations. Once the detect evil pings, your characters just aren't going to treat that NPC the same anymore, and if you've got a paladin ...

I've always hated alignment detection, because it screws with any political game you may want to run, and is like a total substitute for sense motive in a lot of situations. Once the detect evil pings, your characters just aren't going to treat that NPC the same anymore, and if you've got a paladin ...

I've always hated alignment detection, because it screws with any political game you may want to run, and is like a total substitute for sense motive in a lot of situations. Once the detect evil pings, your characters just aren't going to treat that NPC the same anymore, and if you've got a paladin ...

Projected 4e BBEG scene: Paladin PC: "Now, Lord Darknaught, you shall pay for your crimes!" I roll a 27...that's 7 damage, plus I moved him four squares!" GM: "Your god is weak...taste the power of Asmodeous!" He dashes back to you and swings...hits...you take 8 points, plu...