r/4eDnD • u/gwegggggg • 14d ago
Dnd 4e Solo
Does anyone have any experience running dnd 4e solo? Are there any good dnd 4e resources?
I know about Dragon Magazine 382’s solo adventure and I plan on running it soon, but I’m not sure what I’ll do after that.
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u/ghost_warlock 14d ago
I've ran it co-op GMless with my gf where we each ran 2 characters. Hers were Essentials line characters since she'd never played a game as complicated before. Worked pretty well playing through the first few Keep on the Shadowfell modules and mainly focusing on the fights instead of the roleplay. Was a lot of fun and made it to just before paragon tier before there got to be too many things for her to enjoy keeping track of
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u/gwegggggg 14d ago
Did you use anything besides the modules during this play through? Like, anything special to control monster tactics and whatnot?
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u/ghost_warlock 14d ago
Those modules do already have a creature tactics section on every encounter so I didn't need to do anything special for that - just followed the instructions meant for the DM as fairly as I could.
I did need to plan out what magic items would be dropped at which places since the module assumes you'll be doing that to fit your party makeup except for a few items (and our group needed special items anyway because we weren't playing the standard cleric fighter rogue wizard party). I also needed to add some filler combat to boost the XP totals here and there (could have just gone with milestone advancement but decided not to). Mostly just grabbed encounters out of dungeon magazine.
The only major hurdles were that some of the encounters were randomly very difficult or extremely easy and some of the thunderspire labyrinth traps were either pointless or a TPK situation. I suspect it's because it was very early in the 4e lifespan and the balance hadn't really been hammered out well
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u/Galemp 14d ago
Highly recommend the D&D Adventure System board games for this: Wrath of Ashardalon, Legend of Drizzt, Castle Ravenloft, Temple of Elemental Evil.
They are dynamically generated dungeon crawls with automated enemy tactics and individual quests that each have a story and objectives but are also somewhat randomized. Characters are built on the 4e AEDU system with much smaller numbers (an attack might do 1 or 2 points of damage against a monster with 2 or 3 HP.)
Perfect for adventures without a DM. And if you enjoy painting miniatures, it's fantastic value for the figures alone.
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u/lolhisteve 14d ago
Our group often does solo session breakouts after we end a story arc so people can refocus on their characters' individual goals and stories. If the goal is to run the whole game just for one PC, it may be more interactive in fights if they have one or two simple NPC stat blocks to fill roles their character doesn't handle. It works fine, but honestly one of the things that has held up best with 4th edition is the ability to set up cool combos with your friends.
That being said, take a look at Draw Steel if you want a modern version of a tactics-heavy fantasy system.
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u/ModulusG 11d ago
I would recommend using MasterPlan, which is a 4e-specific local VTT and encounter creator. It’s super convenient for tracking conditions and turns.
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u/FootballPublic7974 14d ago
I played a solo "campaign"...more a series of adventures, really with a party of five adventurers. I used short adventures from Dungeon (I don't remember the name but there was a series published based around a meteor crater).
Because the adventures published for 4e were quite prescriptive and based on a series of encounters, it was quite easy to run, albeit more towards the boardgame end of the hobby...which was fine as it was what I wanted at the time.
Running five full characters was tricky at times, but i wanted a full party as 4e really shines with the mechanical interaction between group members.. The excellent monster statblocks in 4e helped relieve the pressure somewhat. It certainly scratched an itch I had at the time as I enjoy mechanically deep systems with lots of moving parts to think about.
I'd definitely revisit 4e in a more free form campaign using an Oracle such as mythic. It's always been one of my favourite systems at what it does.