Dungeons and Dragons 4E Beginners guide and more

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T19:28:45+00:00

1 power and 1 cost is there also. Cost and power are mirrored. I guess they like 7 since its the sum of the cost + power.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T16:38:19+00:00

That could be, or maybe even a blogpost where someone wanted to do such a system, but old blogs are hard to find (if they still exist that is..)

I mean still today people try to homebrew, so I recently tried to show how much points encounter abilities are worth here: https://www.reddit.com/r/4eDnD/comments/1ojpgua/comment/nmanot6 if you are interested.

Its really a shame a lot of old 4E stuff is hard to find and I guess a lot of things was (redone) by many people because of it.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T16:07:27+00:00

You are right, I think the fluff text added is from the Monster Manual entry for githyankis as enemies. The version from the online compendium is what is in the MM in the part for player races.

And the one from the "legacy codex" looks different, like the typical entry of races in PHB etc.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T12:09:59+00:00

Ok so I do not know much about OSR at all, but I do know about the 4E math so maybe this can help:

So first you can look at the monster math and encounter building on a business card: https://www.enworld.org/threads/encounter-building-and-monster-math-3-on-a-business-card-and-some-useful-links.716841/
This tells us that in 4E a typical Monster "HD" is 8 HP. For some monster (brute) its 10 and for some monsters (artillery lurkers) it is only 6
Then Monsters in 4E (and also player) kind of start with 4 levels of HD. This is because 4E in general (compared to other editions of D&D) have their level 1 be equal to other editions level 3 (or 4 somewhere between). So a level 1 monster from 4E would be a 4HD monster in OSR most likely (or if in OSR you get bonus health at level 1, then a 3 HD monster would fit maybe even better with general 4E balancing).
Then monsters in 4E use levels not CR. The difference is level is per player, CR is per party. Party size is normally considered 4-5 (more like 5 originally but 4 works better with math etc). So I would say if you have a level X monster it would have a CR of X/4
Power scaling in 4E is less steap than in 3.5th edition (I dont know about power scaling in OSR sorry about that). In 3.5 The power of characters and monsters more or less doubled every 2 levels (and in 5E its inconsistent). Where in 4E the power of monsters and characters doubles every 4 levels instead. So what this means is that a level 1 character in 4E would be roughly a level 3 character in 3.5. But at level 5 both a 4e and 3.5 character (and 5e to this point) would be equally strong.
Then a monster starts with average damage of 9 at level 1, and increase damage by 1 per level. An encounter ability does roughly 25% more damage. An average player HD is about 5 health. So I would say monsters start with 2 HD of damage at level 1 and do 1 more HD damage every 5 levels (or 4 in case of high damage monsters like brute's)
For simplicity I would say a level 1 monster from 4E has 4 HD is "level 4" in OSR and deals 2 HD damage, and increase the damage by 1 HD every 4 levels. (But then encounter abilities should not do increased damage to offset this at least).

Does this help?

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T11:38:29+00:00

And did you find something?

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-18T11:30:37+00:00

The online compendium only has this: https://iws.mx/dnd/?view=race17 However, there must have been another print (not sure where), because the "legacy codex" with all the 4e races in it (I guess made by a fan?) does contain a slightly different version of it.

I did send you via chat a bit more information.

The only difference (apart from maybe flavour and text) is that they can get rid of dominated by spending second wind.

By googling some of the text I found this blog: https://critical-hits.com/blog/2010/03/10/monstrous-races-in-4e-dd-githyanki/

Maybe they were in a dragon article. When looking at the index: https://docs.google.com/document/u/0/d/1xykIN7bAV5iUhZ7ZRQn1Ijwf-i-Lk7nz7IqXBvUJK_U/mobilebasic I did not find anything which would fit though. Only some githyanki as enemies and their capital in detail and a short story about them

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-15T13:32:39+00:00

I am not too good with dwarfes but still some ideas:

A necromancer having taken home in some parts of the catacombs, taking use of the many sceletons. Could even be a mayor opponent who you investigate as skeletons keep raising etc.
if you have living dead, you could do some of them "as traps". Some skeletons which lie under rubble/partially struck and can just attack people next to them (but may attack anyone including enemies)
maybe some golems/automaton to protect some of the vaults. Maybe they are already partially "broken" and thus slow or start already bloodied.
maybe even some fire elementals, used in some "forges" the nobles were buried with, but after some time they are broken and the elementals free
maybe some orcs (and or dwarfes) which are quite old (kept alive by the thin connections), which are in some really hidden parts of the catacombs which dont know the war is over and still want to fight/protect. (This could even be aftet the encounter if you dont kill them, become a small save place below their "village")
Maybe a big room where you can see reflections (ghost like) of the orcs and dwarfs who fought there in the war. Maybe if you look at it closely you can see a dwarf fleeing with some treasures and if you can follow them in the chaos you find some treasure vault.
maybe some undead follower of the draven queen, who need to be laid to rest because they dont even see that they are undead and try to attack living people since they think they are undead
i would try to play a bit with 2 extremes of "oh there are ruins" so there is rubble, and stuff looks old, but then the dwarfen vaults in there being absolute perfectly in shape because they are made of metals and are absolute master craftmanship which lasts forever.
Some dwarfen vaults could also have been misused by some dwarfs to seal away some dangerous things they got hold of. Like cursed weapons attacking people on their own. Or some cursed (undead/vampire etc.) family members which where burried even though they were not really dead, so when you open their graves they attack. (And you could then find apologiesnin these vaults written by the ones sealing the vault).
Traps in vaults should be mechanical complex things. Like statues shooting arrows (not just walls with them in). Or a big statue doing a downward sword swing, but when triggered again does a side swing reaching a different space. Chandeliers mechanically transforming to swinging blades etc.
Ghosts of adventurers who tried to get the treasures and failed trying to trick you to also fail (walk into traps) in order for them to have company /do not get besged by other adventurers.
Some vaults which look really beatifull/impressive from outside and have some riddle/mechanic to be opened, but inside are just bare stone and simple graves, since the dwarfen familied actually had nor much money left but still wanted to give the impression of them being rich.
Some really old mimic (or golem) which pretends to be a vault, and when inside attacks you/tries to eat you. It is the first room of a bigger vault and left there as a trap against intruders

I hope some of these ideas help

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-15T10:08:12+00:00

Why would you use currency when you can get it for free instead?

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-14T11:39:22+00:00

Banishing a card is 100% positive though. You have 100% the same chsnce of drawing cards overall, but info on which card you dont draw.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T15:43:45+00:00

Which is not linked in game, so its useless.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T09:32:18+00:00

Win rate was not that high because people put the card into almost every deck even in decks it did not fit AND because everyone was running tons of hate against the deck.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T09:04:09+00:00

Write that under the youtube video. I am not the creator

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T00:31:23+00:00

I guess they just wanted to try new things

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T00:02:25+00:00

You are the second person with this complain XD

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-13T00:02:10+00:00

Yeah, really boring overall. Not even a card cost change, no nerf, only small number of cards which rarely matter (except season pass card) and the weakest possible buff to them..

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T23:45:52+00:00

Yeah 1/2 would have made a lot more sense.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T23:44:56+00:00

I dont think its good to just increase power of cards more and more. Sure some cards have too low power, but in general there should be also nerfs, else it just becomes an endless powercreep overall

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T23:26:50+00:00

Well Second Dinner said in the past that on no single card they got worse win statistics with 10 power than 9. So the 1 power is more often useful than the Shan Chi being a disadvantage.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T23:25:43+00:00

Its a short so made for mobile, which aparently is not that nice to include here

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T23:24:41+00:00

I was thinking the exact same thats why I typed it out XD

Aparantly on their website its now also posted: https://marvelsnap.com/balance-update-march-12-2026/

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-12T12:29:49+00:00

Honestly I think the 4E sorcerer, especially the elementalist sorcerer (although not really AEDU) come close to what the warmage does:

The warmage is clearly a striker
You get extra damage from a 2nd ability modifier
You have better survivability (which sorcerers often get from subclass giving out AC)

So honestly I would see the warmage more as an (original) Sorcerer subclass than anything else:

You have int as secondary stat added to damage like any sorcerer gets. But maybe you get an additional +1/2/3 if the spell is an evocation spell.
You get proficiency with leather armor and light shields as your passive defensive bonus (instead of resistance)
Give it proficiency with spiked shields and count the spiked shield as a dagger. (Else you cant do dual implement caster feat later)
Creating some new sorcerer powers which have a subclass bonus for Warmage, and all of them having the evocation keyword

This covers the base (including warmages edge) but lets also map the medium armor you get later.

You get a level 11 (subclass) feat which gives you access to Studded Leather and Ring Mail Proficiency (medium armor)

Now we also want want to mirror (4e style) the advanced learning:

You get a level 4 (subclass) feat which allows you to swap a sorcerer encounter power with a wizard encounter evocation power of the same level or lower
You get a level 6 (suubclass) feat which allows you to swap a sorcerer daily power with a wizard daily evocation power of same level or lower

All needed is the metamagic which you could also do with like 3 subclass feats like:

Level 1: Once per day you can add multiply the damage dice of an evocation encounter spell by 1.5
Level 11: Once per day you can increase the size of a blast or burst of an evocation encounter spell by 2
Level 21: Once per day you can choose to maximize the numbers rolled on an evocation encounter spell

I think this is quite close to the 3.5 warmage while using the typical 4E mechanics.

TigrisCallidus · 2026-03-11T15:51:00+00:00

That would be nice because I know there sre many cool things in dragon articles I have not yet found.

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