After about 8 years since I last DM'ed a game, I've been asked to run a session. Unfortunately my books - adnd, 2e, 3e, 3.5, 4e, and 5e are in storage two states away.And i prefer physical copies. Thanks to critical role and the movie DND books have gone up in price which is weird.>4e books are ~10-15$ now. Is it viable to run 4e in 2025? I don't remember hating it and I still remember some home rules to streamline combat to speed it up a touch. Does anyone have suggestions for 1-3lvl adventures or campaign settings? >4e thread I guess
I don't care that you prefer physical.Download OSE and run them Hole in the Oak. Keep it simple.https://necroticgnome.com/products/old-school-essentials-basic-rules
>>972352554e has gone through something of a rennaissance in the last 5 or so years, with a few fairly-popular games adopting some of its design principles and focus on finely-textured grid-based tactical combat with descrete abilities, so I would say that yes, it is absolutely viable to run it in 2025. The cracked character builder with all the resources are still out there for free if you know where to look, but you don't really need the software if you have everything and know where to look and how to find the eratta.
>>97235255It was never viable to play 4e.
>>972352554e had a number of issues. Massively bloated baseline monster HP. The At-Will. Encounter, Utility, Daily ability structure while I think a great evolution was hamstrung by a lot of the later abilities just being slightly better versions of lower level ones and a general sameyness that wasn't addressed until the Power of X books. A lot of floating - or + 1s that come and go every round makes keeping track tricky. But if you are just gonna run a single session then had them premades that around around level 3 or if it's a small say 3 or 4 part adventure then start then at one and level thenm when they reach each part so they can experience it and you get more monsters to throw at them. A lot of the early adventures aren't very good out of the box imo and need a lot of work to bring them up to snuff. They made one or two "Dungeon Delve books" that had an sortment of premade dungeons with paper thin reasons for the party to go loot them. You could just string some other together with a more unified "plot".
>>97235255Look, I love 4e, and it is incredibly easy to run and play in 2025. But running it purely from physical copies is less than ideal. They don't include the errata, several useful books are unavailable, and the online compendiums have everything in one place for easy reference. It can be done, just make sure you use MM3 math for the enemies and have the errata handy. Buy what you can and print the remaining books, they are all available online for free. The generally recommended adventures are HS1 The Slaying Stone, Reavers of Harkenwold, Madness at Gardmore Abbey, and Thunderspire Labyrinth. For new to 4e players, I also generally recommend Prey for Smiley Bob.
>>97236233This is a fantastic suggestion, thank you I'm fine printing off a few adventures and some extra sheets and errata and stuff. >Im running this for some younger friends (I'm late 20's they're in college) and I plan to give the books away if the game takes off because they're broke kids and I prefer basic fantasy, 2e and 3.5 anyway.Also I just prefer to have the books to flip through in front of me.
>>97235698I've been using these retards since 2010, but I don't disagree that ose is good.However, I'm running a game for dudes that grew up on WoW, bg3 and RuneScape.
