So...4e anyone still keeping it alive

Well...anyone still around or still running 4e? Any interesting new house rules? I know there are a few people kicking around Enworld but 4e fandom is seemingly quiet as the grave.

I haven't been playing any RPGs, let alone 4e. I've done a couple of guest shots in 5e, and all it's done is make me miss 4e.

Honorbound wrote:

I haven't been playing any RPGs, let alone 4e. I've done a couple of guest shots in 5e, and all it's done is make me miss 4e.

I'm running a 5e game at my FLGS and it's so boring. Combat and such is an absolute joke. I will admit I like the "class features" and return to old school spell casting that 5e brought in. I'm currently working on a bit of an overhaul for 4e to bring that stuff in. Some sort of Ritual points system that would make them easier/free to cast and build like Vancian stuff of old. I really want to do a series of class features like the Essentials Mage had, but can't figure out just what I want yet.

I have recently bought new books does that count

My six year 4E campaign was put on the shelf back in April so we could give 5E a try.  Due to scheduling, we're only able to get together once a month so I ran 7 sessions of LMoP.  Quite honestly, I didn't like the system at the table at all.  I thought the edition read very well but when put into practice I didn't enjoy running it.  For the most part, the players had fun with 5E but I think most of them were missing the array of options their 4E characters have and the exciting, tactical combats 4E so easily offers.

I can now say I gave 5E a chance and have concluded that the edition isn't for me.  I respect those that like 5E and I hope the edition does well.  

Last weekend we dusted off our 4E campaign and had an awesome session on New Year's Eve!

My ongoing 4E campaign took one session off since it landed on December 30th. We play every other Friday. We'll be back at it on January 13th, rolling through the second half of Act 2 of this campaign.

I started this campaign back in February 2016 with Session 0. Our first game session was in March 2016. On our current track, it looks like they should be into Act 3 of the story by February. And depending upon how quickly they move through that part of the story, we could be wrapping up this story by summer.

But, never fear, I have another story to run (assuming that's what the players choose to do) once they finish up with this one. The characters will be either 9th or 10th level at the end of this story and if we go forward, they'll be able to continue with the same characters.

I have ideas for other campaigns as well. I seem to have a pretty dedicated group that enjoys what we're doing, so I'm pretty lucky in that.

Damn, that is lucky.

My group is still alive and well and thoroughly 4e-inclined. We didn't even really discuss 5e... just nobody cared enough to suggest trying or buying it, based on the previews and stuff. Pretty sure 4e is going to be our edition for keeps, unless WotC decides to go back to 4e's design mentality for some later edition.

Anyway, we're currently running two 4e games on alternate weeks. Mine has been going for years (three I think?) so far, and probably has another three in it, since it goes all the way to 30. The other is much younger and is inspired by Dark Souls, and the GM has quite the flair for environmental and mechanical storytelling. We've also got a one-shot coming up when we get together with some visiting friends, which is apparently a fantasy ripoff of Die Hard. I can't wait XD

As for houserules, the most recent house rule I made was setting the Blackguard on fire and replacing it with more of a noble monster class, the Vindicator. Think less "MWAHAHAHAHA" and more "I am the warden of my own worst self". Mechanically, it's closely related to the Blackguard, but with much less restrictive construction and a subtheme of combining elemental and radiant damage.

This is mostly because I can't stand the Blackguard's execution and flavour (AFAIC, bringing back alignment restrictions was a terrible design choice that undermines a core charm of 4e - the fact that your thematics are your own). But it also gave me the opportunity to goose/cleanup the class's weaker and more shoddily designed powers, and I like the result. I doubt it's going to be breaking any charop records, but it can make at least one pretty satisfying build :p

In general I have a big fat pile of 4e homebrew stuff, most of which I never shared because I had hoped to publish it. Unfortunately, from what I can see the 4e SRD never got as far as the PHB3, which kind of screwed my core psionic races :\ I could share it here if people were interested, I guess, but there doesn't seem to be a heck of a lot of demand for 4e homebrew. Am I wrong?

You're lucky, I'm just saying. While I'm curious to see the homebrew stuff, I'm not sure how large the demand is - the site's kind of dead, sadly.

For sure I am It's great to have such a reliable group, who are all on the same edition page.

I've thought about running an online game supported somewhere like here or ENWorld, but so far I've always been too cautious. Having been with the same group for so long, there are a lot of shared ideals and assumed flavours (for example, my world tastes distinctly of anime, romance and social justice themes) that I worry would go over differently with a group I didn't know well ^^;

Yeah, as much as I love the idea of new material for 4E (homebrewed or otherwise), I don't think the demand is there. I know that at one point I had the idea that I'd learn how to code new and modified material into the CBloader. But in reality, I'm not an experienced coder at all; and my group consists of gamers that aren't looking for a lot of specialty and customization. So the core "official" offerings have been more than enough to keep everyone happy and crunching along.

I'm always interested in new and different stuff, but unfortunately I know that I won't end up using it.

Hi all,

I actually found this forum over the weekend because I'm trying to keep the game alive.
There's a small group of us who used to met up every 2-3-4 weeks for the last couple of years but it's getting more difficult to get our schedules aligned so we started supplementing that with some online sessions via Roll20.

And we loooove 4e. Always have.
Every one of us have been playing computer RPGs since the Amiga, and I used to play 3rd/3.5 for a few years in my youth.
Since we were playing online more we tried out 5th edition but we all quickly got bored and yearned to add the tactics and teamwork back to our sessions.
4e is the system that always felt like home for each of us.

Anyway! Getting misty eyed and rambling...

Now that we've given 5e its turn and realised it's not for us it has galvanised my resolve even more so to make 4e our permanent home.
I'm just not sure which way to take it.

My current project is a custom Roll20 character sheet backed by some API scripts and a web page.
The web page waits for a .dnd4e file to be dropped and parses it, filling in all the fluff information, building powers etc. (behind the scenes it has the full 4e compendium). It also generates an ink-friendly set of power cards in the page so you can print off a lookup sheet (or for playing in the flesh).
The Roll20 Character Sheet has a textarea field that listens for changes, when you paste in the data block from the web page it populates the entire sheet with your info, links up all the buttons for ability checks, powers, etc.

From the players point of view:
- Use the offline Character Builder to mess with your character
- Hit save and put your .dnd4e file somewhere easy to find
- Drag'n'drop the file into the web page
- Press Ctrl-V into your Roll20 character sheet

Combining all this with a restricted set of 4e content (from the Manage -> Campaign Settings) and looking into making new elements for the character builder should keep us going for the forseeable future.

But part of me is also feeling a bit restricted by the Character Builder.
Over the Christmas period I built a prototype Character Builder as a web page which has a sidebar where you make all your choices, and the main part of the page generates a character sheet on the fly (again, printer friendly). And it works for the basic data I added. I was going to start pulling in all the data book by book.

But then I thought, all this work... Should I go further and just make my own 4e clone game...
Then I can make all the changes, and try out the new mechanics I've had slowly bubbling away.

Arrgghhh, too much 4e. Just thinking about it is a serious hobby, let alone playing.
I'm going to browse round the forum and see what I can find. I might be a few years late but glad I found this place and whoever's still lurking.

lawlesslands wrote:

But then I thought, all this work... Should I go further and just make my own 4e clone game...
Then I can make all the changes, and try out the new mechanics I've had slowly bubbling away.

Arrgghhh, too much 4e. Just thinking about it is a serious hobby, let alone playing.
I'm going to browse round the forum and see what I can find. I might be a few years late but glad I found this place and whoever's still lurking.

Ahh, the inevitable "Pathfinder" stage of homebrew :p I have a 4e child system bubbling around, too - the basic mechanics work so well for a shounen anime/superhero type game, I thought, why not go all the way? Mine uses themed power sets to group the choosable powers, so you choose primary and secondary power sets based on your archetype (for example, the tank chooses a Defence primary set and a Melee Attack secondary set).

There are also general power pools, for things like special movement, that everybody can pick from in addition to their personal sets. At many levels, though, you upgrade an existing power you like, rather than getting a huge collection of powers. MMO nerds may notice that character Building is very much inspired by City of Heroes (the other underappreciated game I'll never let go of ;p).

Anyway, welcome to the boards! There are still a few of us floating around. Tell your friends! :p

Hi Fox, thanks for the warm welcome.

I'm thinking almost exactly the same thing so far with groups of powers, although I haven't got round to writing much of anything down yet.

If everything is in a pair of "4e Term"/"New Term"...

Sets for each role (Defender/Ward, Striker/Strike, Leader/Bolster, Controller/Control)
One for each power type (Martial/Steel, Divine/Understanding, Primal/The Elements, Arcane/The Arcane, Shadow/The Shadows)
Sets for classes (Fighter/Might, Cleric/Divinity, Rogue/, Wizard/Knowledge...)

So when you create a character it would read more like a description:

"Fuelled by steel and might, I ward"
"Fuelled by the elements and knowledge, I control"

For a tank, and a control sorcerer. Add in multiclassing and for a Battlemage-y type it could be:

"Fuelled by steel, knowledge, and the arcane, I strike"

I really like the idea of each set of powers having 3 tiers of powers/features available so only the pure classes can get the 100%/third tier, and for multiclasses your primary class gets access to the 2nd tier and just a taste from the 1st tier for your secondary class.

But this is all up in the air. I still don't know if I'm going to just do this with material from say the Essentials books and condense it into lists (e.g. the Essentials Thief has "Rogue's Tricks", this list could be available to anyone to select one of their powers from if they picked Rogue as part of their class) or go ham and engineer my own set.

And let's not even start on the changes to magic items...
Arrrrggghhhhhh

I like the sound of your multiclassing idea. Frankly, while multiclassing in 3.x was a hot mess, I feel like they were way too cautious about it in 4e. A feat every time you want to take something from class 2, and you can't mix at-wills without wasting your paragon path on it?

I'm no champion at min-maxing, but I can't imagine that having free reign in the second class's power list would make you especially more powerful than just using frostcheese or radiant exploits. Unless your first class just had a straight crappy power list, but then I think we have bigger problems ^^;

Now, admittedly I've almost never needed to use multiclassing in 4e beyond the entry feat, but that's the problem - if all you really wanted was an implement proficiency or some nonsense, it hardly feels like multiclassing. And hybrids, while they are an honest go at the concept, are super fiddly. Nobody in our group has even bothered trying to make a hybrid build without using a character builder program.

In any case, a tier system seems like a good way to keep some limitation in place, while letting players have the broader range of choices they probably want from MC. Sounds like a good bit of design.

Magic items... well, they are their own beast ^^; Frankly I've spent the entirety of my D&D career trying to get rid of them, because I just don't have the looting instinct (nor do most of my players). Every time I go to draw a character, I imagine how ridiculous they would look with all those item slots filled with some magical tat, and it's just unbearable.

For other people that's probably a super fun part of the system, precisely because it is so silly, and I guess that's D&D. But I'm always looking for good alternatives (and since my child system is more action anime/super hero than swords and sorcery, magic items will not feature).

At the very least, I would take advantage of the item rarity concept, and skew magic items heavily to giving always-on effects - the fewer conditions, the better. A paragon-tier character can basically double the size of their power list with magic item powers, which provides lots of options, but in play it's like hitting a roundabout during rush hour.

Fox Lee wrote:

For other people that's probably a super fun part of the system, precisely because it is so silly, and I guess that's D&D. But I'm always looking for good alternatives (and since my child system is more action anime/super hero than swords and sorcery, magic items will not feature).

At the very least, I would take advantage of the item rarity concept, and skew magic items heavily to giving always-on effects - the fewer conditions, the better. A paragon-tier character can basically double the size of their power list with magic item powers, which provides lots of options, but in play it's like hitting a roundabout during rush hour.

Inherent Bonuses plus Enhanced Alternate Rewards system seems a better fix for your flavor

One of the downsides of 4e is the weight of almost identical items and that magic item grind.
Weapons become like iPhones.

"OMG! There's a new iPhone coming out next week"
"Oh. What features have they added?"
"Erm. Well the number is one higher"
"Better chuck this piece of crap out then"

Combining the potential 6 versions of each magic item with the number of very similar effects (or worse, negligible daily powers) ends up with blindness in the Character Builder. There is too much to choose from so I find the players end up having to find up character optimisation boards as a shopping list. Pretty depressing when they have those builds that are all drearily the same "well you're gonna be crap from levels 1-14 while you get your feats in place but then oh boy! Will you look at those novas".

Yeahhh. No. It's Inherent Bonuses all the way.

I've got a new Campaign Setting in mind to restart our 4e games which is basically:

• Same technology/economy levels of Saxon England before Alfred the Great unified Wessex[/*]
  
• Only the lord of a village/castle would own a sword, they are rare and powerful[/*]
  
• Heavy armour? Yeah you better be a king's bodyguard or kill a king, or loot a kings tomb[/*]
  
• The "northmen" are invading in small, but ever growing, bands - they are well armed[/*]
  
• Heroic tier will be surviving the northmen, protecting your homelands and driving them back[/*]
  
• Paragon is when you realise you've run out of challenges so you take the fight to the northmen... And realise that they're invading your damp, swampy lands because holy shit, they're suffering the same fate but from orcs, ogres, hobgoblins...[/*]
  
• Epic tier is when you venture further out into the continents of the world[/*]
  

That's the basic premise anyway. I don't like to build detail until the players poke in that direction.

A big part of the whole idea is that there is very little in the way of "money".
A few different areas might have their own currency, but it's not the traditional 4e economy of a group of adventurers rocking up back at home with 720gp at the end of the first level.
I'm thinking gold will be downgraded to silver and a low level adventurer (who is considered rich compared to a peasant) might have 10-20 silver pieces in his pocket at a time.

And the big thing inspired by the "Alternative Rewards" DMG2 section is favours.
e.g. You start off living in some crappy little village, governed by a "king" in a small wooden hill fort nearby. He asks for brave souls to <insert starter quest>.
Your crew goes and does the deed, they find some low quality weaponry, lame armour that doesn't quite fit and a few silver pieces. You return home, the king is grateful.
He offers you room and board in his barracks, food and mead in his hall, access to his armoury, access to his advisors... If they do just a couple more teensy weensy little errands.

Behind the scenes all this money the party are gaining access too is being chipped off the 720gp level 1 treasure parcel they should have received.
When it starts to run low the king gets all "what have you done for me lately?".
When the party strikes out into the world, they might come across another castle/village/town and have very little money BUT they might have the ear of the ruler because of previous deeds at other places.
This time the ruler might give the party access to priests, ritualists, weapons training, superior forges and blacksmiths...

I plan on using masterwork armour instead of the basic enchanted/magic armour and stressing the importance of what it looks like.
You might be able to kill some northmen and get something that is equivalent +2 AC better than anything the blacksmiths you have access too can make. Only problem is your own people kill people who look like northmen on sight.
Those are some sweet war pyjamas Mr. Wizard, but only the regional kings personal advisors have those, why are YOU wearing a set?


And magic items...

You have to make them yourself, or take them from someone else who has been in your position.
They don't just exist in the random chests behind the last guy in the last room of every adventure.

You want a sword that does frost damage as well as physical?
Well you better find your way into a frost troll's lair and roll your sleeves up.
You need to figure out a way to kill the troll but be close enough to pass your sword through it's last dying breath to absorb the frozen energies.

Flame resistant armour?
No worries mate, find yourself some fire beetles living around volcanic areas and take the chitin to your favourite blacksmith and leatherworker, I'm sure they'll be able to cobble something together to attach to your existing armour.


Magic items are truly magically, they take blood, sweat and tears (and actual knowledge on how to do it, gained from old scrolls, libraries in foreign lands, access to loremasters and priests...).
Let the Inherent Bonusesm and gifting the Essentials Weapons Feats take care of the maths, and let the story take care of the flavour.
You don't throw your axe away because a bugbear dropped a +1 version, you keep it because that axe killed the hobgoblin lieutenant and any goblins in his warband permanently grant Combat Advantage when you wield it with 10 squares.
(And the player spent 2 sessions thinking up a badass sounding name for it...)

The Legendary or Item that Grows with you as you discover its secrets route is something I liked doing all the way back in 1e.

Exactly. You've been doing it for decades, and 4e already has Artifacts with Concordance points that unlock powers - why can't we bring that basic idea down to the "regular" magic items?

It doesn't take any reworking of the 4e maths/economies to make it happen.

No homebrewing, just presenting it to the players in a different way with a little side of DM bookkeeping? Sounds like perfection.

One of the elements I have used is the idea of a legendary smith who opens a magic item so that when used to slay special beast X the power of that beast is absorbed into the open item. (This is an alteration to the Martial practice that allows magic weapons so that special effects are gained ie it makes the practice closer to the equal of crafting magic items via ritual).

That's a real nice idea.

I had previously been toying with stealing Diablo II style crafting.
Where the players find small pieces of gems and runes while out adventuring which they can combine into magic items. They would have to beg/borrow/steal the "recipe" or convince people do it for them depending on what kind of item they were crafting.

The maths and items ports over quite easily. Diablo II has 33 levels of runes and 35 levels of gems so just chop off the last 3 and 5 of each and you're sorted.

A level 1 magic item requires: 1x El rune, 1x Chipped Topaz gem
A level 2 magic item requires: 1x Eld rune, 1x Chipped Amethyst gem
A level 3 magic item requires: 1x Tir rune, 1x Chipped Sapphire gem
...

And these runes drop instead of the Magic Items included in the Treasure Parcels, the gems replace some of the Art Objects. The party could decide to either spend their runes as soon as possible or stockpile them to upgrade to more powerful runes:

An Eld rune can be created from 3x El runes, 1x Chipped Topaz and 232g worth of "reagents"
A Tir rune can be created from 3x Eld runes, 1x Chipped Amethyst and 264g worth of "reagents"

These numbers come from the default 20% of value sell price, as though you had sold the level 1 "magic" items and bought a level 2 magic item. The gold balances the rest of it.

I liked the idea because it let me do the "DM's should ask their players for a wishlist of items" without having to do that, plus gave the party a few decisions on spend now? Save the runes? Be a team player and gear up the person most in need of some buffs?

Decided against it so far because it also seems a little bit "gamey".
But taking on board your idea... Anyone skilled enough can craft a rune, but you have to douse it in the blood of a defeated enemy, or absorb it's soul with the rune to energise it, and then you can take it back and get it crafted into your weapon... Now that is pretty sweet.

(As an aside, I'm speaking about actual 4e games here - the matter of gear in my child system is another one entirely. Its mechanics are significantly different enough that I won't be patching in inherent bonuses or the like - I'll be adjusting the base numbers to start with.)

These are fine proposals, but they definitely require a certain type of behaviour or setting. Like, it's all well and good to say that the heroes will need to go questing if they want a magical weapon, but part of the reason magical items are "meh" in my group is because with one exception, we simply don't enjoy questing for loot. We like questing for justice, helping out a friend, personal vendettas, professional curiosity, turns out my adoptive father is the head of the inquisitors, etc. Adding difficulty or coolness to the item's creation doesn't really change that (for us!). (In fact, a central aspect of my current campaign is recovering a super powerful artefact, and I had to have NPCs actively prompt the party several times before they cared enough to pursue it).

We're not very fond of pseudo-medieval fantasy - our setting is a lot more semi-industrial fantasy pulp. My players aren't doughty peasants working their way to importance by impressing the king, they're fantasy X-men recruited by the Resistance to destroy the king's secret doomsday weapon and help the princess install a democracy. The PCs are always the ones who are breaking social convention, so limiting items by station or faction affiliation isn't a good fit.

In our case, we like the reliability of magic items in 4e. We're indifferent to acquiring them and nobody enjoys playing the loot lottery, but we're also very mechanically minded - nobody wants to fall behind the power curve or have their build undermined by not being able to get their chosen weapon type. I think that's the core of it - for us items are predictable, a part of mechanical design rather than story or luck.

We absolutely do desire that consistency, and replacing items only with inherent bonuses causes problems with a lot of builds. But treasure is a real problem, if only because we frequently forget to include it in encounter design (in the rare case where it even makes sense for one of our encounters to include treasure). Alternate rewards doesn't really fix this, because acquisition is more or less the core problem.

None of this is meant to be a judgement about other play style that do fit these ideas well. Nor am I trying to complain about ideas being offered, or refute what you are each leaning towards! I'm just trying to reason it through, because I've always had difficulty identifying the key aspects of this particular issue.

That said, I think you both have really helped me identify that - our group really just wants gear to be part of character progression. We don't want it to be removable or destroyable, we don't want to it be bought, sold or looted, we don't want it to be randomised, and with a few special exceptions we don't want it to be special or story-related. We just want it to be consistent.

I wonder where that leaves me, in trying to houserule it? Inherent bonuses fit the baseline bill for sure, but to suit what I've described, I'd also have to find a way to-

• Properly fold treasure acquisition into character progression. Maybe insert "gear" improvement intervals between levelups?
  
• Cut down on item power bloat without killing build-enabling powers. Maybe I could just limit the number of "items" with activated abilities, period?
  
• Provide the barest minimum of fluffing them into something other than enchanted items.
  
• Keep item slots somehow. I don't actually care if items are still removeable/sellable or not (I can't remember the last time either of these things came up in one of our games) but there would have to be some way to keep item slots, since those are obviously critical for balance.
  
• Make sure said fluff does not impose too much flavour - it is extremely, extremely important to us that players own their own thematics. Things like "Chakras" (3.x Incarnum) are a fine seamless replacement for item slots, but they have a very distinct flavour I'd rather avoid. Divine boons are out, as there are no gods in my world, and an oath or geas feels very uncomfortably close to the behaviour policing of old-edition paladin codes. Ideally, I'm aiming for something more like the minimalist flavour of 4e core - simple, functional, expandable, adaptable.
  

LOL I was actually shooting for Paladins and Cu Cuhlaine and Samson flavor wise... with the gifts sometimes called Charisms, Sometimes Totemic Empowerments, Geasa and for the Martial they are in some sense Martial Arts that require regimen to upkeep them. (in a sense like having more powers instead of items)

The Oaths are in some sense more about style than about a real limit
http://www.dyasdesigns.com/charisms.php

I do not actually consider items slots as that vital for balance (perhaps you can demonstrate an abuse case)

The Chakras idea for me actually works very well flavor wise to explain slots items bind up with your Chakras etc.

Perhaps that key that I mentioned for Martial oriented Arts/Grand Master Trainings the benefits provided by items can simply be wrapped up as powers...

Garthanos wrote:

I do not actually consider items slots as that vital for balance (perhaps you can demonstrate an abuse case)

Well, it limits the number of items you can mix and match, which I think is quite important. Even if the bonuses are prevented from stacking, static effects and activated abilities are still valid, so limiting the combo potential seems important to me. And if I'm looking to cut down on item power bloat, completely opening up list of low-level garbage with attached powers seems like a bad idea ^^;

Quote :

The Chakras idea for me actually works very well flavor wise to explain slots items bind up with your Chakras etc.

It's a good system - it just isn't a very good fit for my setting, flavour-wise. It's like adding an extra power source to any character who doesn't fit the "mystic warrior" concept, in the same way that the gear system effectively adds "magical gear" as a secondary power source.

Ultimately, my goal would be to use something as generic as classes: you get this progression, and it's up to your character design to determine if it's martial training, magical toys, divine gifts, demonic taint, alien symbiotes, monster bloodline powers...

Quote :

Perhaps that key that I mentioned for Martial oriented Arts/Grand Master Trainings the benefits provided by items can simply be wrapped up as powers...

I think that's more what I'm looking at (though not as powers, obviously, since my goal is to reduce power bloat).

Perhaps I could use a generic progression with a series of themes, akin to power sources, with a minor benefit and/or restriction on each. That might help a player decide when they weren't otherwise inspired - plus, one could still keep "magical treasure hunter" if one did like the idea of magical gear.