The Rules Lawyer runs Dungeons & Dragons 4th Edition! SESSION 1
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- Опубліковано 1 жов 2024
- Pathfinder 2e taking inspiration from D&D 4e has always made me want to play and learn more from this system. We are running through the very straightforward Dungeon Delve "campaign," which was designed to be a series of thirty one-shots, one for each level of play.
The players in my private campaign have been gracious enough to have their play livestreamed. They met me through my (mostly PF2e-focused) UA-cam channel, and have varying levels of experience with D&D 4e. (Most have not actually played it before.) This will be a joint journey of discovery!
TO FOLLOW THE REMAINDER OF THIS SERIES, SUBSCRIBE TO MY *SIDE CHANNEL*, "RULES LAWYER DISCORD COMMUNITY CHANNEL" at:
/ @theruleslawyerliveplay
Our party is:
Rocco/Not Valeros (human fighter)
Boletus (dwarf warden)
Granny Hillburrow (halfling rogue)
Codrus (minotaur avenger)
Claw (longtooth-shifter runepriest)
Ezzall Sheihre (human wizard)
Thanks to the D&D 4e Discord, which helped me and has a lot of resources for running D&D 4E: / discord
YOU MAY ALSO BE INTERESTED IN MY FIRST 4E CAMPAIGN with Pathfinder 2e players:
• Rules Lawyer Runs: D&D...
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LIKE & SUBSCRIBE! I'm a lawyer who teaches and runs tabletop RPGs (Pathfinder, D&D, Starfinder) for kids and teens, making videos and hosting events related to TTRPGs and board games.
JOIN THE DISCORD to game with our community and join The Endless Tale Tavern PF2e campaign! / discord
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/ theruleslawyer
Follow me on TWITTER at: / theruleslawyer1
What did you think of 4e compared to PF2 and 5e?
Granny's player here: 4e is cool, it feels quite a bit like PF2e IMHO, but definitely more high powered, level 1 felt like level 4 or 5 sorta haha. More floating modifiers than PF2e which is a bit of a down side imo, but there are some things that are simpler too. VERY different from 5e, although there are similarities here and there. So far it's been a lot of fun, I definitely think it would do better if it came out today. And if it had free rules available lol
Ronald - what is your experience of D&D4e and PF2e - where (if anywhere) is 4e better.
Not the one you asked but I can answer you this from my point of view:
4E is better at "high fantasy", PF2 characters are a lot more "grounded" especially on low levels. 4E characters can do absolute fantastic feats from level 1 on. Also you cant be one hitted on level 1.
4E has more movement, if you like combat with lots of movement, where positioning, forced movement, and terrain plays a big role, 4E is really good at it. Teamplay is mostly position based, kicking enemies around into area attacks, helping allies to get away from enemies to be able to use range attacks without provoking area attacks etc.
4E also has (especially on low levels) a bigger variety of possible / balanced effects. PF2 has a lot tighter action economy. Having strong area attacks is no problem in 4E even Martials can have this on level 1 (attacking 2 or more enemies arround for full damage). Similar you can summon a creature which attacks on its own on level 1 (1 per day) as certain classes without breaking anything, or you can stun enemies, and even take controll over them (with high probability). Similar actions granting free movement to (several) allies is no problem.
4E is in my oppinion also better in combat variety. You can fight vs 20 enemies or vs a single boss enemy (with normal chances for hitting them) with unique special attacks and both is balanced. Also having specific enemies for playing a boss (which behave completly different, and as said you still have good chances to hit etc.) makes the bosses more diverse, over just taking an enemy at higher level (which you can also do in 4E), similar the elites (double monsters) and minions (1/4th monsters) help creating variety.
4E can be made easier to start for players than pathfinder, since you need to know less basic rules (like many maneuvers and status effects etc.) since players mainly just need to know their attacks which you can easily print on some cards.(There are several tools to print these power cards and its often used by the community). Also other smaller things, here some examples: In both games it is needed to heal full between combats, but in 4E you have a simple general mechanic for it, where in PF2 you need to know what skill and class options exist. Also things like picking races is easier, since they have normally 1 really cool distinctive scaling active ability (and 1 or so good passive), over a list of potential feats etc. Also 4E has specifically simplified classes (including 1 simplified ranged caster) which can be used by new players.
4E also have several interesting settings. (Not just 1). It has the Forgotten Realms, the "deault D&D setting", but also the Nentir vale (which is a lot more open setting where you can easily insert things and which is gameplay first per design (thats a reason why it leaves a lot of things open)), the really well made Dark Sun setting (with a free and good 30 level campaign in Ashes of Athas) which is quite a bit darker, and also the Eberon Campaign setting. In addition to that it has a really brilliant Steampunk setting (and campaign) with Zeitgeist. which is 3rd party, but quite liked.
4E is better if you want to include attrition in your campaign (but not always). If you use all non essential (normally simpler) classes, then all classes have some daily ressources, in addition to this the daily healing is limited with healing surges, and there are several non combat mechanics which tie into these healing surge mechanic. Like you can lose them in non combat encounters (in skill challenges, or also by failing simple skill checks, or because of traps etc.), or rituals (non combat magic), often use healing surges, some of them each following day 1 to keep it active. However, you can still do some days, where you just have 1 fight, without creating any inbalance between casters and martials, or do long days with several fights and other things to really make it about attrition and still there is no inbalance at all and both is fun in the same campaign.
4E also works really well still in low magic item campaigns, because of the alternative rules (for some settings) it created later. This gives additional flexibility. Combat balance still works. Also as partially mentioned before, you have simple and complex characters for all positions, so you can play even a balanced good group with only beginners even still having spellcasters. There are also ways for non casters to learn rituals or martials can get their own type of rituals. All of these are the case because 4E listened a lot on player feedback and improved a lot over its run. It was at the end cut a bit short, but they did a really great job on improving on its flaws, even when this meant a lot of work for them.
@@tigriscallidus4477 That settles it - my next campaign I'll write in 4e. Thanks for your insights.
@@dylanhyatt5705 great to hear. If you want to find ressources the 4e subreddit is a great place (I can then also link you to a mini guide to get started and the 4E discord). 4E was always good, but even things people hated did improve over its release.
@@dylanhyatt5705 glad to hear. I cant post the link here but on a sub... on a big discussion platform you can find all the help yoi needed to get started including additional links.
@@tigriscallidus4477 I'm not sure if I would agree with most of what you claim, but I am not surprised that the overwhelming majority of your statements are player focused, since 4e remains, buy a very wide margin, my least favorite system to DM of ALL TTRPGs I have ever tried. Too many diverse conditional modifiers to track every combat round, combats that always lasted way too long due to stacking hit points and surges, minions were mildly dangerous but largely frivolous (which just delayed combat even more) . I agree, that the game flattened the power curve between martials and casters, but that was at the expense of any real variety. There were certainly lots of encounter power options, but the difference were mostly just flavor for the most part they were all cookie cutter based on the roughly the same damage formula with the lower power attributed to at-will powers. roughly 2x that damage for encounter powers and roughly 3x damage for daily powers. Additionally, even though there were lots of options, customization through multiclassing was greatly limited. The character sheet was still too complicated (not much of an improvement on 3e), action economy was still bad as it was in 3e, if not worse. Monster customization rules were vague and otherwise just terrible. 5e wasnt great for this either, but is was far better than 4e. If I stuck to pre-built encounters, it was fine, but a headache if I wanted to make my own. In the same space, I had lots of old modules I was attached to, but the effort for conversions was just not worth it.
Its not all bad. Lots of options for mobility, There were some novel approaches to encounters and exploration and added a defined mechanic for skill challenges but that just wasn't enough to save the system in my eyes.
Just wondering but why do so many actual plays turn on obnoxious music that's too loud to hear the players and make them practically too annoying to listen to?
Just curious because all you do is detract from the roleplaying game and make it more difficult to understand what you guys are trying to say.
You can give the feedback of "The audio mix is very back track heavy." Without being so rude about it.
To answer your question, Ronald along with most are not professional live play productions. Sound mixing barely registers on their radar of importance due to lack of knowledge rather than intent to be annoying to you or anyone.
Live production is much more difficult than it seems (like most things) and the main purpose is for learning/education about systems and differences with the secondary being entertainment.
Do I like the mix? No I do not. But I can get past it because I could still hear everyone clearly enough.