How did they make 4e treasure even more complicated than 3e?

[Username17]

So if the monsters have 90% of the magic items, how did they manage not to wipe out the rest of the humans, elves, dwarves, etc.?

Because magic items "don't count" when a monster holds them. They don't cause real game effects until they drop and get identified by PCs.

-Username17

[The 13 Wise Buttlords]

Because magic items "don't count" when a monster holds them. They don't cause real game effects until they drop and get identified by PCs.

Why would anyone think that players wanted the game to move more in the direction of MMORPGs?

That kind of silliness is fine for FFXI or EQ or whatever, but an immersive game world?

[Leress]

Because magic items "don't count" when a monster holds them. They don't cause real game effects until they drop and get identified by PCs.

Why would anyone think that players wanted the game to move more in the direction of MMORPGs?

Because that is were the money is..."let's be like the cool kids around the corner" (even though the cool kids are just wearing the same clothes you use to wear but with different colors and costing more)

[Talisman]

Personally, I won't be happy until treasure is represented by huge, spinning gold coins that float in midair after you've killed the monster. To pick up the treasure, you have to declare that you're running through the coin ( a move action).

Also, I think hidden treasure should be concealed within bricks that you have to smash open with your head. Because I'm old school.

[Cielingcat]

Because magic items "don't count" when a monster holds them. They don't cause real game effects until they drop and get identified by PCs.

Why would anyone think that players wanted the game to move more in the direction of MMORPGs?

That kind of silliness is fine for FFXI or EQ or whatever, but an immersive game world?

I don't have any idea why they would think it's a good idea, but they're doing it anyway.

[RandomCasualty2]

I have mixed feelings about the 4E system. It doesn't make sense at all from a consistence sense, but it does stop the "loot everything in sight" paradigm that got ever annoying in 3.5.

Because while I personally like a consistent world, I really don't want to bother worrying about what equipment some mook has, and high level adventures got to the point where really, every warrior mook needed special gear to even be a threat. And that just sucked from an adventure design standpoint because it took forever. Seriously I don't want to take forever designing a mook. That kind of thing is fine for a computer game, where the game calculates all his bonuses and stuff from the items you give him, and makes sure you don't exceed your NPC budget by level, but it doesn't work well at all for an RPG where the DM has to manually go out and buy that stuff. Simulation is fine and all, but I want to run this adventure by sometime next week, and I don't have 12 hours to devote to making sure everything is perfect. And that part of 4E philosophy I do like. First and foremost, monsters are challenges the PCs have to overcome. The simulationist pieces can fit in later if it's not too much trouble, but if it is, then screw it. I mean, it's not like the 3.5 system made sense either.

The new treasure system, while not being logically consistent, is actually fairly story consistent, because in stories, you don't read about how the hero walked out with a bag of holding full of lesser magical swords and armor. That stuff just doesn't happen. Most of the time, the items of the fallen guys are just left there, unless it's something especially important. So the new system does fix the batcave problem, which is probably a good thing, because nothing annoyed me more than PCs trying to calculate how much all the crap they took from little NPCs was worth. It reminded me of PCs trying to sell furniture from the dungeon. And that's shit we want to avoid, because it takes away from real playtime.

Now really, where they dropped the ball was including +X items at all. Without the bonus items, they could escape most of the simulationist problem of enemies not needing/having magic items. But as it is now, you're going to pretty much think that NPCs are better than your PCs, because they get similar numbers without all those magic boosts. Which kind of sucks, because as heroes you're flat out weaker than the monsters, even classed NPCs, and you need your crutches (like +3 swords) to compete. I mean I'm sort of okay with needing a magic weapon to deal with a giant or a dragon, but when every high level fighter just oddly gets by without them, that makes my hero feel pretty shitty. And that's a bit too Everquest for my tastes, but I think I can get used to it.

Overall I don't think the treasure system is really that bad.

[CatharzGodfoot]

An ideal equipment system for NPCs is one in which any ability which requires an item includes that item by default. The 3e Monster Manual (and earlier editions) do that pretty well with entries like 'Attack: two +3 wounding daggers +15/+15, 1d6+5 + 1 con'.

When you shift magic item rules to make them cool and versatile rather than numerical bonus generators, you no longer have to calculate changes to an NPC's stat block from those items. An item becomes an ability which you attach to the stat block with a post-it note, and can take off if you like. When a PC gets the item, you can stick the post-it on her character sheet. Metaphorically speaking.

At that point a magical item can at worst be one of those monster abilities that never gets used, but with the added bonus that the PCs might use it later.

[JonSetanta]

Personally, I won't be happy until treasure is represented by huge, spinning gold coins that float in midair after you've killed the monster. To pick up the treasure, you have to declare that you're running through the coin ( a move action).

Also, I think hidden treasure should be concealed within bricks that you have to smash open with your head. Because I'm old school.

Or giant floating rings that absorb into your body when you touch them.
Yet, if you get hurt, even 1 point of damage, they all come spewing out of your flesh by the hundreds.

[Voss]

Actually, if i understand points of light correctly, the source of the items must be from monster civilizations, because humanity doesn't seem coherent enough for mass producing magic items, unless they reduced the time it takes. this, naturally, makes very little sense when combined with the omnipotent magic item sellers guild.

Actually, this isn't it. Magic items are coming from the human (and tiefling and dragonborn) empires that have risen and fallen over the last thousand years or so. Also the elven and dwarven kingdoms, but they're a bit better at not collapsing at the drop of a hat. But the 'default setting' relies really heavily on the 'ruins of fallen empire' schtick, with the last one falling about a century before the PCs are adventuring.


I picked up the 'introductory adventure', Keep on the Shadowfell. Its... interesting. I may write up an actual review at some point, but I have extremely mixed feelings about it. On the down side, the price point is very high, the paper quality is utter shit (one read through, and the booklet cover has about a dozen fingerprint smears on it, which is really bad since the back cover is the last page of the final encounter, and the paper is curling up already).

The editing is pretty sloppy too. Let things like text not matching up (an encounter mentions kobolds throwing spears, but they're really throwing javelins, and shit like that). But also bigger shit- the first encounter flips east and west in the text, so the party arrives in the middle of a pack of kobolds, and can see most of them, instead of walking down the road toward the hidden kobolds). Its easily fixed by rotating the map 180 degrees, but its a stupid, simple thing not to catch. The keep is described later on as somepleace the townsfolk don't even go and don't even talk about, but one villager goes there to pick flowers. There's also some inconsistency in the quick start rules books. They've been faq-ed already, but its a damn sad commentary on Mearl's writing that drinking a healing potion is listed as both a standard and a minor action in the module thats an introduction to the damn system. (Its minor, btw, which raises some other issues, like if you have your hands full in the first place- something that hopefully the full rules might address, but the quick rules dont').

In addition to that, a couple things were left out of the sample characters 'for space considerations' they are also up on the website, but its damn sloppy to, for example, leave out most of the half-elf cleric's racial abilities. This particular PC is also just built really, really, badly. Several of his prayers are functioning off his lower attributes, and he's trying to be a melee guy when its very obvious he's only a support cleric.

On the other hand, the encounters themselves are fairly interesting for the most part. Only one turns into a terrible bug-fuck, as its almost impossible for the kobolds outside the lair not to warn those inside the lair, which means that although for some reason the ones inside won't join the fight outside, the two waves inside are ready and waiting for the PCs, and the encounter is it about twice the size they're expected to handle.

The final battle has a bit of a catch too, as roughly the half the party is going to take a fair chunk of damage right before it starts, and its pretty damn hard *anyway*.

But a lot of the encounters are interesting and fairly varied without being stupidly inconsistent. A fair mix of traps, a couple of interesting encounters mixing traps and creatures. A nice fight where hobgoblins can actively try to bull rush PCs into wells, while their minions rush to unleash a trained giant spider on the party. The various monsters use different tactics and feel very different- goblins don't fight like hobgoblins, and neither fight anything like zombies or skeletons.

The minon and elite monsters are a bit... odd. I really don't like them, because they feel totally artificial. I can see a use for the minion rules, because I totally don't mind a large pack of kobolds at say, 11th level, that have level appropriate, but fairly weak attacks and come in hordes, but can easily be one-shotted. But mixing level 1, one-shottable minions with other creatures of the same type that can take a greatsword in the face up to 3 times feels really, really awkward and fake.

The elites also break the encounters. They have action points and usually an extra ability or two, which is fine. But they also have artificially bloated hit points and defenses (150% and +2 to all, respectively), which just serves to drag out the combat. The final boss literally has 4-5 times the hit points of the PCs and he's essentially just a human cleric, and has something of a pet that heals him every time it hits, which makes the final encounter fairly crazy, especially with another 3 enemy combatants in the room (who are at the PC's level or slightly higher). They'd be just as interesting with normal hit points, but the combat wouldn't drag out into a static miss-hit-miss-hit grind at the end (without the elite bonuses, the boss's hit points are still high, but not quite as absurd, and he's still just as dangerous).

Magic items *are* pretty much only found as treasure. One guy is wearing (and uses) a set of magic armor, but the rest are in chests, even another suit of armor that could be used. And the final boss has a magic dagger, which admittedly he doesn't really need, but his 'rod of ruin' is specifically noted as an object that channels his evil power, not an item of treasure, so its just an ordinary staff in the hands of anyone else, which is fairly lame.


So, yeah. The game system largely seems to work, aside from the problems with minions and elite monsters, the numbers work out. The encounters are fairly interesting, and a very nice change from the 'dogpile on the monster' approach of the 3e system.
And there is a fair, but not high, amount of role-playing stuff in the module, as well as some hints as to how to handle it, which is fairly appropriate for an introductory module. The module is a bit light on the RP side, depending on how you want to handle it, but you can also work it into the module more.

The town itself fails at verisimilitude, though. The population is listed at almost 1000, but there are literally 20 buildings within the walls, and one is storage only, and another is inhabited by exactly one person. It mentions small farms in the area, but an occupied lair is less than a mile east of the town, and the evil keep is less than 2 miles north. With thick woods mentioned west of the town, that leaves a very limited amount of space. Even if you're generous and assume 20 odd people to a building (10 would almost be reasonable), thats 400 people in town, and another 600 on small farms in an area thats maybe 5 square miles, with danger on every side... A more reasonable number would be about 120 people in town, and maybe twice that in the surrounding area. The town is also kind of indifferent to the dangers. They are aware of them, but the town has a grand total of 10 guards, and only 2 are on duty (and don't patrol) at night. For a place thats not-quite under seige by an evil death cult, its all pretty casual. A raid or two with captives getting dragged off would help the tone of the module immensely. Villagers missing is half-heartedly mentioned at one point, but if they actually are, its not mentioned in the resulting encounter.

The traps, and encounter hazards are done fairly well. Its more than just search, disable device, done- depending on the trap, it can be destroyed, disabled, worked out and turned off with Arcana checks, avoided, and a couple other options, which makes them more interesting.

Overall, it is not a bad showcase of 4e. The plot isn't great, but it isn't horrible, and is fairly consistent, aside from villagers who pick flowers and watch goblins at an evil keep they don't even mention, let alone approach. Paper quality, price, and shoddy editing are definite downsides, and disturbingly bad for the first 4e product.

I'd rate it about 3 out of 5. Ok, but not great... a somewhat indifferent introduction to the new edition. When they shifted the release dates around, they should have made it a full module and ditched the intro material. It takes away a lot, and they leave a lot of holes for 'space reasons'. which makes it a less than stellar introduction to the system.

[RandomCasualty2]

The traps, and encounter hazards are done fairly well. Its more than just search, disable device, done- depending on the trap, it can be destroyed, disabled, worked out and turned off with Arcana checks, avoided, and a couple other options, which makes them more interesting.

How do they handle traps?

I remember back when 4E was coming out, that article about a passive perception where you may automatically detect traps by passing them.

I assume traps are more like encounters now, instead of just "you fall in a random pit and take 3d6 damage."

Are traps skill challenges or what?

[Voss]

Perception checks are pretty much for passive traps like hidden pits. You notice it, or not. And being pushed in involves a saving throw, <10 you fall in, 10+, you don't. (Or better odds if you actually have modifiers).

Other traps, it depends-
one area involves a maze of corridors with zombies and runes- the runes make an attack role if walked over, and also attract the zombies. Pretty much the only option is jumping ver them.

The big trap room has several interlocking traps. Most involve statues which attack the party, and can only be disabled by moving and climbing on them (which, since they activate when you move into a certain range, means they activate at least once). Then finding an access panel and disabling them. Usually with thievery, but one can be disable with arcana checks, though that is harder. They can also be damaged and just smashed.

The last involves several statues that create a wall of force, trapping characters and then water slowly fills the area over several rounds, and then a whirlpool starts up. 3 (or 2, depending on whether you read the trap description or the accompanying text, sadly) statues have to be disabled to be deactivated- destroyed, tipped over (str check), or multiple thievery or multiple arcana checks.

The interesting part is the traps interlock to a certain extent. the blasting statues can push characters into the reach of a sword swinging statue in the center of the room, or away from the statues that have to be disabled for the water/force trap.

They would be a bit better if there was some way to deal with them without triggering them first, but unfortunately, there isn't. And there is a certain amount of 'a wizard did it' to the way the work, (and that evil critters just don't trigger the traps), but thats Mearl's weak fluff more than a problem with the traps themselves.

[Koumei]

Personally, I won't be happy until treasure is represented by huge, spinning gold coins that float in midair after you've killed the monster. To pick up the treasure, you have to declare that you're running through the coin ( a move action).

Also, I think hidden treasure should be concealed within bricks that you have to smash open with your head. Because I'm old school.

Or giant floating rings that absorb into your body when you touch them.
Yet, if you get hurt, even 1 point of damage, they all come spewing out of your flesh by the hundreds.

In either of these cases, would collecting 100 result in gaining a free Resurrection?