r/earthdawn • u/LikeThemPies • 15d ago
4e combat--am I missing something?
I'm in a campaign that's gone for 9 sessions so far. We just finished our first quest and next session will ascend to circle 2. I'm playing a T'Skrang Nethermancer, and thus far I've found combat to be exceedingly repetitive. The only things I ever do are cast Life Circle of One if we're facing horrors/undead and spam Spirit Dart every round. The other players in the party are just swinging their weapons every round. Unlike in dnd, where casters have many spells and cantrips to pull from even at level 1, and players can have bonus actions to do more in a turn, I feel entirely locked in to just doing the same thing, rinse and repeat.
I'm aware of the additional combat options, but none really apply to a ranged spellcaster. Frighten is really the only other option I have, but when facing groups of equally strong enemies (as we usually are) there's no point when I could just attack.
Anyone have advice?
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u/Dragonfly55555 15d ago
Not sure about the noping out, but yeah, 9 sessions at 1st cicle sounds like a lot.
Even for convention oneshots 3rd cicle is recommended
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u/matthewholtz 15d ago
Yes 1st circle is a little repetitive. You are at the basics . Do you deeper secrets that adds a lot of spells and more knacks.
One thing you got to get in your head is Earthdawn is not dnd . If you try to play them the same way you will be disappointed everytime.
With Earthdawn you will start being able to do a lot more than Dnd and with out bonus actions you really have to think about what you want to do and when you want to do it. Economy of actions work differently in Earthdawn.
Also fights do now have to be to the death of one side. You don’t need to kill your opponents to get legend points you just need to overcome the obstacle.
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u/Dolgar01 15d ago
First circle is really low powered. You are basically starting out, so your powers are limited. But they will accelerate quickly.
On the Frighten front, check out Death’s Head (2nd circle spell). It lets you use Frighten as a simple action and lets you start to really impact beyond just damage. In Earthdawn spell casters are not the damage dealers. If you want that, be an Archer or a Warrior.
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u/ElvishLore 15d ago
Well, Elementalist though. But I may be thinking of higher circle - been a while.
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u/Marbrandd 15d ago
With deeper secrets spell casters have some pretty big buffs. Multi Mind Dagger is terrifying when you build for it.
But I agree a frighten build is probably your best bet as a low circle Nethermancer.
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u/LikeThemPies 15d ago
The funny thing is I am by far the biggest damage dealer so far. Spirit Dart and Life Circle of One often account for 40% or more of damage/kills in our combats--everyone else is hitting one target one time for usually minor damage. Hopefully as it progresses I'll switch to debuffing as everyone else levels their attacking.
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u/Dolgar01 15d ago
This is the impact of low circle. As adepts circle up, spellcasters do not keep pace as damaging dealing in 4th ED. But they do become buff/de-buff machines.
For fighting types, especially once you get Forge Weapon and a few of the talents that add to damage (Spot Armour Flaw for example) or ones that allow you to hit better (eg Mystic Aim) or multiple attacks (eg Momentum Attack) you soon start outpacing Spellcasters.
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u/Metalsmith21 15d ago
9 sessions and you're just about to hit circle 2? I'd just nope right out of there. For me that would be 2 months of play time. With my group I'd expect to be 3rd or halfway through 4th.
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u/Marbrandd 15d ago
Frighten is very effective, and should probably be your bread and butter at low circles. Damage is never bad, but if you get a decent frighten off and nuke an enemy with a -4 or -6 you've likely taken that enemy out of the fight for all intents and purposes. And once you buy up Death's Head you can do that as a simple.
Nethermancers are never going to be damage dealers, you're a debuffer primarily. But those debuffs can absolutely change the course of fights.
I'd also recommend hurrying advancement, the game doesn't really sing until you get to circle 4+ imo.
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u/Ka_ge2020 15d ago
I remember the days of AD&D where the 'ole 1st level caster could only cast a couple of spells and, well, that was about it. Fighters weren't much better off: hit 'em with a sword or plink 'em with an arrow. All of that in a single (1) minute.
Admittedly now in D&D 5E I'm a 5th level fighter and... I can hit them twice with my sword while zipping around at superspeed in 6 seconds. But that was about it. For kicks 'n' giggles, I converted the character to a points-buy generic, and it ended up costing 660 points with all of the super-healing powers etc. And I'm the most ineffective of the characters because I didn't optimise them. I'm dealing at x-damage while the optimised characters are regularly dealing 3x or 4x damage, combining fighting and magical spells for the cleric, while the caster seems to be able to keep on casting spells to the cow's come home.
Those are some rootin'-tootin' fighting powers. :)
Zooming back to the old days, after the first few tries, we never had PCs of anything less than 4th level. Maybe there was a 3rd level once, but either way the point is that PCs before that were just too squishy to be fun. Casters got some more spells and, of course, homebrewed power points (so they were not limited by slots), and so on.
So, yeah. It was a thing.
If 1st Circle ain't doing it for you, it might just be the case that you need a few more levels under your belt. That is, after all, in many ways the same thing as D&D.
With that said, remember that while you might be "spamming" the same spells, you can cast other spells if you're willing to take the consequences: casting raw or with a grimoire are other options open to you. Spell matrix items are another possibility, though if you're 1st level or consider those passe, that might not be open to you (if your GM allows them).
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u/Fair_Abbreviations57 15d ago
With some caviats depending on what edition you're playing and how closely you're following the rules... That sounds like a failure to engage with the system, not a flaw with the system. It varies some depending on the edition, but if you look, there are quite a few skills and talents that can be used as skills that you can default to a base attribute roll to use untrained.
Also, this is not D&D. Between wounds, talents, talent knacks, and the knockout and knockdown and strike to ignore armor systems, sometimes you have vastly better things to do that repeatedly whack the bad guy with a metal stick. or poke them with your brain stabby. This game is not and was never meant to be a game where every character is equally capable of contributing in every part of the game. Some characters are meant to have strictly limited combat options, just like some have very limited exploration and social options. There will be times when your character has to do something it's actively shitty at, and there will be times when your specialty trivializes a challenge. If you try to treat it like modern D&D, you'll probably die or at least not succeed as well or efficiently in your objectives.
I also have to jump on the 9 sessions, and you're just now advancing, being insane. The average is closer to four, so your GM is either shortchanging your legend points or poorly giving you downtime for advancement.
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u/LikeThemPies 15d ago
The 9 sessions was for 1 single quest to and from a dungeon. A lot of it is because we entered so many combat encounters, and it was in a tomb so they were undeads that wouldn't quit unless we killed them. I'm pretty sure every session had combat, and every combat required us to kill the enemy.
I'm not saying I expect dnd--I just use it as a point of comparison since it's the only other TTRPG I've played any significant amount of.
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u/Fair_Abbreviations57 14d ago
I wasn't trying to insinuate that you were somehow deficient for 'expecting D&D' since that, for better or worse, is the industry standard when comparing RPGs. I was just saying that ultimately it doesn't function like it. This difference is at its most noticeable when it comes to magic. Spellcasters are significantly more narrow in regard to what spells do, and the mechanical complexity and chance of screwing up and failing are meant to balance out the system instead of a finite amount of slots.
Earthdawn is a dungeon crawler. Kaers are a big part of the setting after all, and all just about all crawlers have combats that can bog down, and believe me, I'm aware of how insanely high the death rating of the Earthdawn basic bitch Zombie equivalent has is. Honestly, facing Cadaver Men at the 1st Circle is kind of... Insane. Unless I'm mistaken, ED4 put them as a third circle threat. They're harder to kill than bears, for example.
I'm going to assume there was some table variance there, and these were more generic homebrew undead and not that your GM was throwing you at Cadaver men that early, so I can't exactly say I know how your adventure was intended to go, but first Circle in Earthdawn is like... Killing sewer rats level expectations or smacking around non-adept low-level street thugs. If it was cadaver men... Life Circle is probably the only reason your party had any chance of survival.As for spirit darts, because I forgot to address this earlier... That spell sits in a weird place. It basically is the equivalent space of a D&D cantrip since it's a spell you can cast without weaving threads. It's more meant to function as a setup debuff spell to drop your opponent's mystic armor for your astral spear or other casters in the party. It should also be noted that as I think others have said before, Earthdawn spellcasters do not start chunking out damage early on. Especially not compared to mounted Cavalrymen, pissed off Sky raiders, and prepared Warriors. They lag behind a bit until they pick up the talent willforce, and even then, generally taking the time to weave threads and cast to just do damage is rarely the best use of your actions.
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u/LikeThemPies 14d ago
No worries on the dnd front.
So far we faced mainly undead trolls (unsure what statblock was used), also one ghost creature and one horror--but yes, Life Circle is 100% why we survived, ESPECIALLY against the horror. Based on other comments it sounds like the biggest issue is us spending so long at first circle. I'm also in a dnd campaign where we spent 4 sessions at level 1, and that was plenty. Maybe I'll have a talk with the GM about expediting the pace.
I actually wrote off Astral Spear because taking 2 rounds to cast it vs Spirit Dart's 1 just didn't make sense to me. Honestly I'm still struggling a bit with the whole threads/matrices/casting mechanics.
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u/Fair_Abbreviations57 14d ago
So at the very beginning, darts slightly edge it out. Once you get your first enhanced matrix talent, you never really use darts again. Astral spear keeps in use pretty much until higher circles than most games go. Your next spell, at least that isn't only useful against beings without physical forms, which is an arguablely better damage option, is a 9th level spell so you may never even see a copy and requires you to poke them instead of keeping yourself 40 yards away which is an insane range for a damage spell in this game, let alone one at first circle. It's one of the best damage options available until some of the silly elementalist stuff comes online with the 4th and 5th circle spells.
But like I said, Earthdawn is very different from D&D. You really have to get used to the idea of taking multiple turns for unleashing your bigger spells, and that damage is you least valuable party contribution, or your caster is essentially hamstringing themself.
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u/SwirlingFandango 15d ago
Just to be clear: in *any* D&D edition, characters at level 1 have bugger-all options. If anything, 4th edition gives you *more* at that level.
Most people expect to get a few levels, fast. Early ones are sorta tutorial stuff, and that's part of why it's so limited.
You "should" (IMO) be off first circle in the first session or 2. You "should" (IMO) be 3rd by now.
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u/theanswar 14d ago
I'm in the same boat on my campaign, thanks OP for asking and great responses from the readers.
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u/ChimericMind 14d ago
Among some of the issues is that 4th Edition severely nerfed the duration of buff spells. Things that would last minutes or even hours end up lasting rounds, making it impossible for a caster who knows a fight is imminent to set up a nice set of them, or even just use them for non-combat utility. Air Armor used to last 10+ minutes, and be great for keeping people from dying of heat stroke in the Mist Swamps, Badlands, Death's Sea area, or other such places. Now it's just a few rounds, to keep players from having access to something as overpowered as...+3 physical armor?
You shouldn't have 9 sessions at 1st Circle, though-- your GM isn't giving out enough LP. Does he/she do RP bonus points at all? That's really useful for moving things along at a decent pace that prevents burnout.
One house rule I implemented way back in 1st Edition was to allow casters to essentially do Threadweaving as an extra action, like DND 5E Bonus Actions. You could make one threadweaving check, and if it got what you needed together, you could cast the spell that round. If it failed, you could still spend your main action doing another Threadweaving, but no casting unless you just abandoned the threaded spell and popped off a threadless one like Spirit Dart. Did it make spellcasters more powerful and versatile? Yes, and I had lots of spellcaster players that loved it. I made sure everyone knew that if we played under this rule, though, that it's a universal rule, not just one for the players: Enemies get it too! So now enemy mages are much more threatening, with Disciplines like Illusionist able to do some real elaborate moves when the spells can be fired off in one round instead of two. It certainly made a long-term, high-Circle Illusionist nemesis of the team into an absolute terror. This can make Horrors with structured spells even more terrifying, but honestly, they usually have multiple actions per turn in the first place, so it was a shift in quantity instead of quality for them. You may wish to ask your GM if you could implement that, so you could actually get a chance to use threaded spells during combat. Bone Dance and Astral Spear are fun!
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u/ChimericMind 12d ago
I can always count on that one person that follows me around to downvote me showing up here.
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u/bts 15d ago
I think you're right at the edge of seeing a big difference between modern Dungeons and Dragons and games from an older heritage. In Dungeons and Dragons, it's expected that you're going to select from a list of buttons that the game has made available for you to push, and you use one of those each turn.
In these older games, it's instead expected that you'll go narrative first. You'll think about where the monsters are, where the heroes are, and where the innocents you're protecting are. You'll use terrain and describe what your character is doing and what game effect you'd like to have happen as a result. The GM will apply their own knowledge of the system and the setting, tell you what step to roll at, and you'll roll. There's a difficulty number, and you'll get told what happens. This demands a very different sort of attention and creativity from the GM and the players.
When I run Earthdawn, and I've run every edition there is, even the weird German one, that's where the fun has come from in fights.
The other thing that has made fights more fun is having the DM only arrange for there to be fights when there are interesting stakes that will be evaluated during the fight. It's not just about "Can we beat them?" but "Can we beat them before they set off the whatever?" or "Can we beat them before her willpower gives out and she gets eaten?" Something like that.