What are the Best 4e Ability Score Arrays?
I’ve been following an interesting thread about 4e ability score arrays at ENWorld. Poster 77IM calculated all of the possible arrays on a 22-point buy, and posted the list. Turns out there are 121 unique arrays, in case you were wondering.
Then the analysis began.
Categories: Philosophy and Rants, Player Advice | Comments (2)
Character Development: Quick and Dirty Backgrounds
Ever needed to sketch out a replacement player character or a major NPC when time is short? Want to add a little depth to that cult leader or the deputy mayor? Sometimes you just don’t have the time to dedicate to preparing a full, in-depth background — or you want to leave some room for a character’s background to grow and change as the game requires. Maybe you’re starting a new campaign, and you want something that will break the ice without tying the characters down with too many specifics before they all know each other.
By asking a handful of questions, you can generate a usable character, with a skeletal background, within 15 minutes.
Categories: Advice, Player Advice | Comments (3)
Defining Roles
(This is a reprint. This post was originally published on July 30, 2008. I’ll be touching on the subject again — and on how it’s changed thanks to the new books that have come out since I first wrote this — in the near future.)
Over at All Your Dungeons Are Belonging to Us!!, Donny raises an interesting point regarding the difference between third and fourth edition D&D. In a nutshell, he feels that character roles, for the sake of game balance, are enforced more strictly in 4e than they were in 3e, and his opinion is that this is a bad thing. It’s the following passage that inspired this post, though:
I do not like being TOLD how my character SHOULD be played. It’s just like that. The great peoples (no sarcasm) over at Wizards have taken this edition WAY too far down the path of one-size-fits-all. The “tyranny of fun” argument was misplaced with the stupid cave slime example, THIS is where it lives. It is right at the heart of the system, not in some silly little table, buried in the middle of a book. Want to play a ranger? Good, you’re the striker. Just. Like. That. Even worse, where’s the customization? Everything that has been set aside for you in terms of powers are designed specifically to reinforce that role. Even within it’s own framework this has problems. You cannot fill any other role.
This is not entirely true, in my limited experience with 4e. But it is largely true, especially of the ranger. Most classes can, with some work, fulfill a secondary role — the fighter can put out damage almost as well as a striker, the paladin has some healing and buffing abilities like a leader, the warlock and the cleric bring some control to the table, and even the rogue can do a lot of sliding and pushing and knocking the enemy prone if he builds for it. The ranger, though, is largely damage. Future books might change that, as Donny notes later, but the core ranger is a striker.
Is this a problem?
Categories: Philosophy and Rants, Player Advice | Comments (9)
