I’m almost done listening to the Penny Arcade/PVP D&D podcast (which I enjoy immensely) and it makes me realize just how many good D&D 4e lessons are in there. The numerous play mistakes made by the inexperienced players, while annoying to anal retentive rules freaks like me, probably reveal a lot about the parts of the 4e rules that are harder to master .
Additionally, listening to the tricks that the 2 DMs (Chris Perkins and James Wyatt) use to entertain and contain Mike (Gabe)/ Jerry (Tycho), Scott and Wil Wheaton are a goldmine for experienced DMs looking out to help new players.
So I thought I would write about some of the common mistakes players do in D&D 4e (and how to avoid them) in part one. Then, in part 2, I’ll discuss what I could glean from listening to the WotC DMs.
Leaders Heal thyself
Jerry has played D&D before and he rapidly embraced D&D 4e. He decided to play a cleric and, as many of you know, they have multiple bonuses to their healing roll. The one that seems to be forgotten the most is the Healer’s Lore class feature that grants all your healing powers bonus Hit Points = your Wisdom modifier (usually 5+ if you max your wisdom).
One thing that would avoid forgetting is to have Power Cards with all bonuses worked right in. While you might not want to pay for a D&D Insider subscription to get access to the Character Builder, you can make your own power cards and put all bonuses in it. Thus, you won’t have to worry about them.
Mark my words Defender
When a player chooses to play a defender class, he/she needs to understand that the “raison d’etre” of the new PC will be about getting hit. All defenders have class features and powers that give monsters incentives to attack the defender, the main one being Marking.
To that effect, understanding how the marking mechanic works is crucial. A defender should always, always mark as many targets as possible. If you want to play a Defender but don’t want to have to remind yourself to mark after an attack, the Warden (Players’ Handbook 2) can mark all adjacent enemies as a free action anytime in his turn.
Also check your other powers and class features because every defender can do something to marked enemies, either when they move or when they fail to attack the defender.
In order to avoid forgetting to mark opponents, the defender player should keep a stack of tokens (poker chips are good, if a bit large) on the character sheet or near dice so they can act as a reminder. When you mark an opponent, you just put a chip under the mini.
Pay Attention now
One of the interesting things about the Podcasts is that it shows how different each player is at the table. Scott Kurtz does not seem the most attentive type. He often draws when it isn’t his turn and often finds himself playing his character in reactive mode when his turn comes up. That’s why he forgets to mark opponents, or forgets that Dwarves are harder to push back and can use Second Wind as a minor action.
D&D 4e is a brutal game for people with any type of attention deficit because it’s full of little things that add up in combat encounters. I remember playing a Ranger at Gen Con and I kept forgetting to use my Hunter’s Quary feature (+1d6 damage vs one chosen target), not using it made my PC into quite the inefficient Striker.
If you have trouble staying focused in a game and you keep forgetting your class features and powers, I suggest that you review your character before each game. Whenever you read a class feature try to associate it with a likely event in the game . For a Dwarven example, you could go “Okay, if a monster tries to push me, I have to remember that I’m hard to move, dwarves are like mountains!”).
Avenge this lack of Proficiency
Poor Wil, he introduces this badass new class (The Avenger) to the Penny Arcade/PVP group and he misses almost every attack he does. At one point the DM asks about his bonus because he finds it low. While the Fighter, Cleric and Wizards of the party had attack bonuses around +7 to +9 or so he was stuck with a puny +4.
(I’ll assume that he never rolled 2 d20s for his Oath of Enmity attacks because he was playing an earlier pre-release version of the Avenger, but I think Wil might have just missed it)
While I have no issue with a non-optimized PC (Wil’s Avenger had a Wisdom score of 16, giving him a +3 bonus, +1 for being 3rd level), he totally forgot (or didn’t know about) his weapon’s proficiency bonus (+3 for a longsword) for all his melee Power. He also didn’t factor in his weapons/implement enhancement bonus.
In his defense, he seemed to have made his character shortly before the game, without knowing the rules. So when his powers said ‘Wis vs AC’ he only took his Wis bonus (and added 1/2 his level when he was reminded).
Shame on Chris Perkins though for not spotting the Avenger’s suckiness, but I’ll get to that in part 2, the DM had a lot on his plate.
The way to avoid this is to have a more experience player (or the DM) pay attention to the new character in the first few encounters and help out the player chose the better plays and learn the rules. After a few encounters, the new player will have gotten most of the tricks and any kinks in the PC should have been ironed out.
A Striking Controller
Mike, was probably the one who made the fewest mistakes. However, he played his wizards mostly as a ranged striker role and hardly ever used his controlling spells (Thunderwave and Ray of Frost). Now that the game has more classes than when it first came out, if a player wants to have a cool ranged Arcane PC that dishes out lots of damage, they should go for a Sorcerer (I’m not much of a Warlock fan) instead of a wizard.
Also, I think the Invoker makes for a more effective Controller, mostly because of the extra damage it can deal to undead.
So that’s about it. Use power cards to take care of all the math (including weapon/implement bonuses), use tokens to mark opponents and associate each of your powers and classe features to a likely scenrio where they would come into play in order to remember to use it at the table.
Up next: What we can learn from WotC DMs.
Sorry, picky rules-lawyer alert
“For example, while the Fighter’s Cleave At-Will power may seem to be pitiful against non-minions, it allows the fighter to mark 2 opponents with only one attack.”
From my understanding of the interaction of the fighters class feature and the cleave power, only the primary target of the attack gets the mark. The secondary target isn’t a ‘target’ in the traditional sense.
Other than that example, a great article, I’m thoroughly looking forward to your advice as to what can be learned from the WOTC DM’s
Their is a lot of circumstantial bonuses that are hard to remember in 4e. Most feats are just that, another circumstantial bonus you have to remember.
This is especially hard for the less tactical oriented players. I’ve got my storyteller player with a bard in my game. I would say he forgets the bonus he gives when someone bloodies or down an opponent one out of three times. This is a big improvement from the start where he had forgotten about it for half the game session.
Posted at the same time then Destrin.
You’re right the fighter marks on attack and the cleave only attack one target and damage an extra one adjacent to it.
I did the same thing with the proficiency bonus with a ranger, even after having already played a wizard in 4E. It simply is not clear from the PHB text that you add the proficiency bonus to non-basic attacks. I wasn’t sure about it until I reverse-engineered a pregenerated character floating around.
Distracted players like Kurtz would probably drive me nuts as a DM. Imagine, being distracted and having your mind on other things while I am in the midst of revealing my magnum opus of campaign stories! 😉
Of course, the podcasts are really fantastic. I’ll admit that, though I have been playing D&D for many years, I had been a lapsed-adventurer for the past couple years. Lapsed, that is, until I heard the PvP/Penny-Arcade podcasts. The sound of dice hitting the table and players cursing their “evil” DM drew me back behind the DM-screen like a siren-song.
I’m sure that Wizard’s of the Coast know how appealing the podcasts are. I imagine they are bringing many, many new people to the game – particularly among a younger crowd, which is really what the hobby needs rather than just old-timer players like me.
@Destrin: I stand corrected and will edit the text right now!
@Yan: Yeah, circumstantial bonuses are hard to remember and because of that I will reconsider my ‘don’t go back to correct a mistake’ policy. Those little +1 here and there can often spell the difference between getting bloodied and getting KOed.
Gah, comments are coming in faster than I can respond. Such cool problems to have.
@Saladman: Yeah, the prof. bonus of weapons is one of those learning curve spikes of 4e. And the reverse holds true. After you play a melee character and make yourself a Dagger-Sorcerer, you have to remind yourself that the weapon’s Prof bonus does not add itself to your power.
My simple rule of thumb is : Power vs AC with Melee keyword = use Prof Bonus.
@jhudsi: Yeah distracted players can be hard on storytelling DMs. If you’re lucky the distracted player is silent, like Scott but if you are unlucky and he’s an extroverted chatty guy (like someone who writes here) this can be especially painful.
I’m currently playing an avenger in a game, and I’m just shocked whenever I miss, cause the Avenger is set up to basically Hit Every Round. (that didn’t keep me from missing 5 rolls in a row today, but I attribute that to weird non-random online dice vs real dice). Poor Wil.
One of the most important things I took out of the podcasts is that if everyone is having fun then the rules mistakes matter less.
Powercards and Tokens are a must use at my table as not only do they help players remember abilities, but they also help speed play up (especially the power cards).
As for distracted players, there are a few tricks I use to keep them inline as much as possible, the biggest one is when it is a players turn, remind the next player in line that he is up next, so even if they struggle to concentrate for a full battle round, they have some time to get up to speed.
Chris and James both ran great adventures, but I was alarmed at what poor DMs they were for newbie players. Chris didn’t pay enough attention to what his players were doing, like Wil’s numbers and he didn’t help to explain people’s abilities very well. Although, in his defense, I don’t think he was familiar with the avenger class. James was throwing fights at them which would be hard for experienced players with those resources.
.-= Nicholas´s last blog ..Dungeon Notes #18 =-.
An alternate method of marking is to use soda bottle rings. On the 20oz plastic soda bottles there is a little ring that is attached to the plastic cap that separates when you first open it. If you remove it from the bottle they fit nicely over minis. Unlike the poker chip idea, the ring is over the mini and attached to it, so when you move it the ring moves automatically. With a poker chip, you have to pick up or slide that flat poker chip as well, which on some map surfaces is difficult. Finally the color of the ring varies based on the brand/flavor of pop so you can have different rings for different conditions (blue=marking, silver=warlocks curse,red=creature is bloodied etc.)
@Sian: Yan would sympathize with you, he often rolls under 5 with both rolls. But it’s long been established that the Dice Gods hate him for being an Atheist and refusing to do any kind of dice ceremonies.
@Phaezen: Awesome Avatar you got there. While my players are the attentive bunch (they’re almost all introverted masterminds) I do keep constant pressure to keep things moving, sometimes too much when I push them to chose power faster, which ends up being the longest part of a turn. I too do the ‘your turn next and then it’s Mike’s).
@Nicholas: I’ll touch on those very points in my next post for sure. James was more or less running Keep on the Shadowfell as is and it surely hard for PCs but the players were also severely disadvantaged by the mistake they made.
@BradG: Yan used Soda seals (found in the caps of 2L bottles here) for marking when he was playing a Fighter. Eric uses glass beads with his warden. Although your Ring idea is indeed very good to prevent having to lift minis all the time.
@BradG: I’m stealing your bottle-ring-top idea. We use the alea tools tokens and I have been thoroughly disappointed, the extremely lightweight DND minis fall off them all the time causing no end of issues.
On the weapon prof bonus. It doesn’t have to be verse AC. If a power has the weapon keyword, you get the prof bonus.
@Risen: Right, now that will teach me to write without checking my PHB. Then again, the book is at home right now… not sure if a D&D book would fit in a Genetics Lab.
Poor Wil indeed, that guy just can’t get a break sometimes. In terms of tactile markers, while I don’t play 4ed, I know one friend took a bunch of heroclix minis and painted colours over the numbers, different colours mean different effects. So he could just click the base to any effects that were in play. Not sure how it went down.
.-= Zzarchov´s last blog ..Lessons from Eurogames =-.
@Zzarchov: That’s actually a pretty interesting idea. I guess that all those Mage Knights minis accumulating dust could be converted to 4e use with that color code thing.
One thing I noticed when listening to the 2nd series was WIl. It appeared to me that he wanted to be a story-teller sort of player. He had the cool name, a concept for his character, spoke in voice, etc. The rest of the players sort of poked fun at him until he conformed to the group. I get that problem quite often.
I’m rather shocked they didn’t have the characters rolled up with the Character Builder. Don’t know when this game took place, but I strongly suspect that WotC had an advanced internal build of the char builder. Maybe it didn’t have the PHB2 classes… But honestly I doubt that.
Also, please excuse my OCD/pedantry, but “the least number of mistakes” should be “the fewest number of mistakes.”
.-= Asmor´s last blog ..Peculiar Places: The Icy Tomb of the Hoar-Dragon =-.
He made the character at head of time at home because that is part of the awesomeness of playing RPGs. I’m sure they would have provided him with a character builder character, but Wil was very excited about sitting down with his D&D books and his advanced copy of the PHB2 and a sheet of paper and making a character. (Seriously, he devoted a blog post to it and mentioned it in several others. Wil Wheaton is not just a geek, he’s an enthusiast.)
.-= Michael Phillips´s last blog ..Sanctuary’s Dragon Slayers =-.
@Asmor: PHB2 classes have been in the character builder since march or april at least. I haven’t listened to the podcast yet so I don’t know what level they were playing at, though with the low hit-bonuses being thrown around it can’t have been very high, even the free version of the CB goes up to level 3.
@jeffx: Actually Wil seems to be quite the Chameleon and while his initial charge to be a full-blown storyteller was shot down early, it kept coming back in all kinds of different ways.
And the Rudy the Undead Dog bit totally slayed me. This is the crap I would pull in a game session where the DM failed to rein in our geekyness.
@Asmor: By the time the second podcast came around, Jerry had made PCs for all three original characters with the Character Builder. Apparently it didn’t help them remember to mark opponents or that Turn Undead also immobilizes undead for 1 turn.
Oh and about that OCD/pedantry thing… you can bite me dear friend, I invoke the ‘English as a second language’ clause 🙂 I’ll correct as soon as I get a computer with an actual mouse.
@Michael Philips: It really shows he’s really into it. I would love to play with him one day.
@Sian: The Avenger was probably not in the Char builder, the second pod cast started in March.
The idea with the soda rings is pure genius! I’m going to have to try that one out next game session!
.-= Teppesh´s last blog ..Vicious Purity =-.
In our 4E game we’re still forgetting -2 penalties and other effects. Another problem is remembering when abilities end which last until the attacker’s next turn. Accurate character generation is easy, though, thanks to the character builder.
.-= Jonathan Drain´s last blog ..Golden Rules of Game Mastering =-.
In Gabe’s campaign (of Penny Arcade fame) they use some awesome stickers that someone in his group designed:
http://twitpic.com/6g93z
I hoping they will release them to the rest of us…
.-= Bryan Blumklotz´s last blog ..STEP AWAY from that bottle! =-.
Yeah, the pop-bottle-ring one is nice. I have been saving them too, but have personally only used them for one specific power/status so far: Invoker’s Glyph of Imprisonment (for a symbolic ring of nuh-uh!). I think it is a great idea all around for statuses/marks/etc, with the only real issue of using them on minis that are not so “mini” – in other words, those with larger bases.
However, I am finding great usefulness from various colored paperclips, bent into triangles and used to hang on minis with status effects, etc.
I basically had to do this with a level 11 Gnome Illusionist/Wizard. He dishes out lots of debuffs and status changes, and it was getting too crazy tracking them. The paperclips worked wonders for me in this regard. They can hang on any mini we’ve been using.
Numerous folks have suggested the paperclips, as well as hair-ties, pipe-cleaners, twist-ties, etc. All great ideas – none of them were mine…ha!
BTW, great post here Chatty. I like you analysis of the podcasts. All of them were hilarious recordings and great inspiration too, making commuting to work a D&D experience in itself.
.-= yoyorobbo´s last blog ..B4 – The Lost City boxer shorts?!?!? =-.
@jonathan: Circumstantial bonuses are the bane of our group. While we manage to track status effects with my Paizo intiative tracker, those little bonuses often slip our grasp.
@Bryan: Those are indeed rad stickers and would make great Penny Arcade Merch!
@yoyorobbo: I really really like the colored paperclip idea, I’ve got tons of those colored buggers gathering dust in my office desk drawer. I’ll try to use them tomorrow. Thanks!
The hardest conditional bonuses to remember are the ones granted by allies. As an example, my Dwarf Cleric has the feat “Shield the Fallen” (FRPG), which gives a +2 bonus to saves and to all defenses to any adjacent ally who is dying, bloodied or helpless. Essentially, I have to monitor the encounter closely and jump in with “Don’t forget your +2 bonus!”
Truthfully, I think all of the little temporary, conditional bonuses are the “worst” thing about 4e. Conceptually great, but they turn 4e into an adventure in bookkeeping. I’m sure it will work a lot better in a CRPG…
I find that that sort of mistake is pretty common to any player who doesn’t specifically think about the strategy behind a 4e game. It’s a really unfortunate weakness of the game. It’s quite easy for players, and especially for newcomers, to “play wrong” because they don’t quite get how one of their key abilities works.
Wizards wants to draw the World of Warcraft crowd, which is all well and good – those guys have been familiar with heals, tanking, DPS, crowd control, and (de)buffs for years. But when someone who’s new to RPGs tries to play just about any character other than a striker, they don’t generally understand how to perform their role without a lot of coaching. I’ve got two fairly new players running paladins in my current game. We’ve been playing for ten sessions or so now, and one of them only *just* figured out how marking enemies works as part of the team. The other player still hasn’t quite got it yet. The only reason it hasn’t impacted party play is because there’s a more experienced, MMO-savvy player running a barbarian, who fills in the gap. Even some of the guys who have been playing for ten years are having trouble wrapping their heads around the fact that wizards aren’t the best damage blasters anymore.
The system is just too complicated to use as a gateway into RPGs. It’s really unfortunate, because its the best-known game around, and almost exclusively the game everyone who joins the hobby is introduced to. A good DM or a more experienced player can help the situation by explaining things a little, but there’s just no reason to start new people on something this complicated.
I actually kind of regret teaching my girlfriend to play with 4e instead of a more freeform game – It would be a lot easier for her rogue to find something useful to do. As it is, she’s one of the most clever players in the party out of combat, but as soon as combat starts she mostly just takes tactical advice from the barbarian.
Making mistake is part of any learning process. Yes 4e is not the simplest of system and it is gear toward the more tactical oriented players, but it as a lot of place for under optimized play. Of course the DM as to take that into consideration when balancing is encounter.
This is where 4e shine as it provides the DM with all the tool to be able to give an appropriate challenge to is player, which is not that easy in other system.
Your players do not yet get how the classes works or how to work as a team, give them mostly encounter of their level. They’ve reached an high level of efficiency give them mostly encounter of 2 level above them. The later will level up faster but they have proven to be able to assimilate the new power while the first group will progress slowly giving them more time to assimilate their classes power…
I love those podcasts!
I also want the stickers.
About the situational bonuses that you give to folks, print out extra cards for them and hand them out to your fellow players or the DM.
This is a great post, I can’t wait for the DM one.
I was thinking that a podcast that did something like this, played a session then discussed what went on in the session, would be a great idea.
@Michelle: 4e is a resources management game. Fortunately like Yan says the game is robust/flexible enough to allow for enjoyable sub-optimal play. Having extra cards to remind people of circumstantial bonuses are a good way of dealing with them.
@BMcS: I’m not quite sure I agree with you as you can see how Mike (a Wow player who’s never touched a tabletop RPG) gets the game faster than the other two players. What he manages to do with the various cantrips is sensational.
That being said, were I to introduce new players to D&D I would likely use Red Box basic D&D (or the 1991 Rules Compendium) and then upgrade to 4e once the player showed interest in the game. Not because I think 4e is better (I do, personnal choice) but because it’s the game I currently play.
@Yan: I totally agree, It’s not for anything that you guys have been facing encounters 2-3 levels higher than your level for the last few sessions. You guys are the D&D equivalent of a fine-tuned Magic the Gathering deck. I think that when we go to Pax 2010, we should sign on for an Ultimate Delve event.
@Dar: Thanks for the kudos! Great ideas for the situational bonuses. Don’t tempt me into some kind of new crazy project, I’ve got enough as it is.
I thought the WotC DM seemed totally befuddled/not sure how to react at several points with the Penny Arcade guys. It’s like he was thrown a curve by anything too “out there” or departing from linearity. Still great to listen to, though.
.-= Zachary´s last blog ..Traveller Followup: Freebies =-.
I was also surprised when Wil kept missing and only after about a million whiffs did the DM ask anything. That’s why I like knowing my player’s sheets and stats and reading over all changes when changes come, because if I feel they’re stuck or out of it for that fight (sometimes even the greatest tacticians have brain drain) I can help them keep track of these things.
If I know that Player X has used Power Y that does Effect Z, and I’ve read his sheet, I can keep track of what that power is doing and what it entails for the fight. If I feel something’s wrong, I can remind everyone of, for example, things like the Warlord’s bonuses to action point use, or the Cleric’s wisdom to healing powers.
.-= Wyatt´s last blog ..Might of Eden: Fabled Scoundrel =-.
I use colored hair bands to track conditions/mark minis. They’re cheap, easily draped over minis, and after a while everyone remembers red is bloodied, green is poisoned, etc.
I love the idea of handout cards for the bonuses you provide to other players!
Gah, comments are coming in faster than I can respond. Such cool problems to have.
It is your choice, you know. If you’re committed to a conversation with every one of your commenters, that’s cool, but you don’t have to.
@Wyatt: We had the same problem earlier in our season. Mike made a new Warlord and he kept missing all the time. A quick audit of his sheet revealed a few points lacking in his attack bonuses.
@Anarkeith: Hey, since I have a 6 year old daughter I DO have a on of them colored bands! Hmm, so many good ideas!
@Noumenon: I have made that choice, as much as I can manage it. When a thread explodes or when it become self sustained, I let it go. 🙂
ChattyDM @32:
It’s true, 4e has a lot of resource management. Actually, that’s part of the reason I took the feat “Shield the Fallen”: although it affects positioning, it consumes no resources.
Where I think we get into trouble is with bonuses and conditions that we are at least 50% likely to forget without great diligence and what I think is best described as “nagging”. As a player (and a woman, ha) I’m not entirely comfortable playing “little voice in the ear” for the other players in my group.
So, big thanks to dar for his suggestion about handing out cards for the effects. I think that could help quite a bit.
@Chatty, #32:
Fair point, but not *quite* what I meant.
Over the years, I’ve noticed that most new players do best in situations they can easily visualize, and that their reactions are usually more focused on the game world than on the rules. I think Jim played out in much the same way – his illusionary sounds, his light spells, Jim’s Magic MIssile. I think the flavor text next to all the powers in 4e helped with this a lot.
Jim Darkmagic kicked serious butt mostly at the game-world stuff. I find that that’s the stuff new players are best at under any ruleset – probably because its the easiest stuff to relate to. Wizards have made kind of an interesting turnaround in 4e. They are no longer one of the hardest classes to play well – I would almost mark them as one of the easiest. Except for the swapping-out-dailies thing, virtually all of their abilities fall within the scope of their powers, which for the most part have pretty obvious and easy-to-visualize effects.
The mistakes my new players made tended towards the more abstract, mechanical side of things: The marks, the saving throws, the hunters’ quarries. They involved the things without a obvious game-world effect. In a really ironic turnaround, the ones who seem to be having the most serious problems are actually the fighters and the paladins – They just didn’t realize how crucial it was to mark their foes, or exactly how it worked. Describing it as “calling an opponent out” helped a little, but even that didn’t really impress on them that they should be doing it as much as possible.
The problem is largely resolved with my current batch of players, who have now been playing for almost a year, but its still stewing in the back of my head – Sooner or later, I’ll have to teach another player how it works.
@Michelle: The Card thing is indeed awesome. Instead of a Nagger you become like a postman or a visitor: “Here’s my card, good for a +2 to your Saves as long as you stand beside my Spirit Companion”
@BMcS: Good counter points there. You are right that the wizard is actually the easiest class to play as their effects go ‘Boom!’ and it’s done. I didn’t realize that until I used the very same PCs in a game with my son over the weekend.
I also agree that you need to have been playing a certain time to ‘grok’ all the tactical foibles of the game and enjoy it more.