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Mendrian posted:I played a Cleric who beat things to death with his hammer almost as well as the Blackguard in the party This doesn't make him a good striker, by any stretch of the imagination. Clerics can do hellish damage at later levels, but they do it by buffing their allies and penalising their enemies. Sever the Source in particular is a ludicrously good power, but see also Deadly Lure, for instance. Which isn't to say Clerics can't off-strike - Mighty Hew is good as it's off-action, Weapon of Astral Flame is great for one encounter, these are why clerics hybrid so well onto STR primary strikers - but they're not ever going to be particularly good at it. With a few exceptions, they almost entirely lack off-action or multi-attack powers.
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Jan 3, 2015 17:00
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What made the class/role thing click for me was the forum LP, and Medibot's sacred librarian of Ioun being an Avenger (IIRC). The class primarily describes what you do in combat, with a few restrictions on skills.
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Jan 3, 2015 19:44
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And there's no harm whatsoever in lifting the class skill limitation, either, save for the very remote chance that everyone will gravitate towards the same skills and leave vital areas uncovered (which isn't even a big deal when it does happen).
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Jan 3, 2015 20:22
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My Lovely Horse posted:And there's no harm whatsoever in lifting the class skill limitation, either, save for the very remote chance that everyone will gravitate towards the same skills and leave vital areas uncovered (which isn't even a big deal when it does happen). People will always make assumptions about who has which skills though, and give you no end of poo poo for being a Wizard without training in Arcana. I don't have it because I'm a goddamn Hybrid, alright? 
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Jan 3, 2015 20:28
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Could be worse- you could be a Resourceful Magician who's automagically trained in Arcana four times. Or a fighter with three skills total.
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Jan 3, 2015 20:47
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Good point, number of trained skills is even more of a concern. I gave everyone four trained skills period, with no automatic training from your class but additional trained slots from other sources. Wouldn't have minded the automatically trained ones but a few of my players had actually complained about them so, fine with me not to have them.
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Jan 3, 2015 21:35
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Mind you, the question of making classes take different roles becomes even fuzzier once you add hybrids. Clerics aren't going to be super strikers. Cleric|Rangers on the other hand...
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Jan 4, 2015 08:10
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Cleric|Whatevers are basically just Whatevers with Scale armour proficiency and +2 Shield Bonus to AC though. |Cleric is a fix for lovely armour proficiencies that don't match your stat requirements. There are very few hybrids that work that way. And yeah, on skills, gently caress class skill lists and gently caress classes with tiny numbers of trained skills. But then, DTAS in general. If ability scores were not linked to values of attacks and defences, it would be a lot easier for skills to work properly.
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Jan 4, 2015 10:02
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Note to self: Write a surge-stealing class that turns them into a temporary resource.
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Jan 4, 2015 11:49
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Rules question for sorcerers: If I have Sorcerous Blade Channeling (use a ranged sorcerer attack power through a dagger as melee) does this also apply to blast powers like Burning Spray?
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Jan 5, 2015 23:15
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Nope, ranged and close (i.e. close blast or close burst) powers are two different classifications and mutually exclusive, even though they can both target nonadjacent creatures. A close blast power can't also be ranged. There are four basic ranges in the system: melee, ranged, close and area, and that's what the feat refers to. e: probably worth mentioning that it would make little sense, too - the feat's main purpose is so you can avoid provoking an opportunity attack, but using a close blast already doesn't provoke in the first place. You can stand right next to three orcs and fire away with impunity. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 23:27 on Jan 5, 2015 |
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Jan 5, 2015 23:21
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Neato, thanks. For some reason I was thinking aoe stuff did provoke opportunity attacks. Time to blast some dudes and maybe teammates. 
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Jan 5, 2015 23:51
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A Bug posted:For some reason I was thinking aoe stuff did provoke opportunity attacks. Ranged and Area do. Melee and Close do not.
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Jan 5, 2015 23:55
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Hey, is there an online char builder here, or is Homebrew the only way to help my friends make characters?
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Jan 6, 2015 00:16
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There is an online one still, which you can find here http://archive.wizards.com/dnd/tools.aspx , or there's CBLoader which if you're careful can get you access to the goon-run, much better, version of the original offline builder.
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Jan 6, 2015 00:45
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So I'm trying to build a Sorcerer. I took the Arcane Initiate feat to multiclass Wizard, and then this feat showed up in the list of options:  I'm assuming that since I don't have Arcane Implement Mastery (because I only multiclassed to Wizard) that I either shouldn't be able to take this feat, or that it doesn't do anything for me?
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Jan 6, 2015 18:50
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You shouldn't be able to take it as you don't actually meet the prereqs. Quite a lot of the CB isn't coded well.
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Jan 6, 2015 19:00
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thespaceinvader posted:You shouldn't be able to take it as you don't actually meet the prereqs. Quite a lot of the CB isn't coded well. Especially anything to do with Ki Foci......its friggin hilarious.
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Jan 6, 2015 19:23
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Multiclassing counts as "is a wizard" for feat prerequisites, and Arcane Implement Mastery is a class feature. I guess there aren't so many feats with an explicit class feature prerequisite that it was worth it to build in a "got here by multiclassing y/n" flag.
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Jan 6, 2015 19:40
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The Bloodknight, an attempt at an alternate Vampire. This is the first draft for a really dumb idea I had while sitting in a car sometime during the weekend. Just the first level so far (plus a couple level 2 powers I thought of), because I want to see what people think of the concept before I sink more time and energy into ten levels worth of powers. I'd like to hear what people think, both in terms of balance, and in how well it reaches the stated goal. Ideas for good feats would be nice, too.
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Jan 7, 2015 02:45
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Well. First and foremost when I heard it was going to be an alternate Vampire I thought you were going to try and take the Vampire and improve it to more standard Striker levels, or maybe even to the levels of a Ranger. This is not that. Okay this doesn't really seem all that Vampire like to me, it plays around with temporary hit points which is a thing that a few classes have done, such as the Blackguard and a Battlerager Fighter. But it doesn't really feel like it does a good job even with that. Either way messing around with temporary hit points doesn't seem vampire like at all. I am not really sure why it is listed as a Striker. It has no Striker Feature. Like a Vampire is a rather weak Striker, but it is still more of a Striker than this. Sanguine Armor seems more of a tanking thing than anything else, though even 9 temporary hit points per round does very little by epic tier. I really hope Bloadsoaked Blade is not the intended "Striker feature," as it doesn't do anywhere near as much additional damage as any other Striker feature. Well it does add some bonus to attack, which most classes don't get without using buffs, but still. The other thing is I am not sure that the increased bonus will ever be used, except maybe at 1st level if your Constitution score is rather low. You are aware that temporary hit points don't stack, right? Philosophy of Heart could help actually trigger the improved value of Bloadsoaked Blade, but only if you would normally spend a healing surge to heal, and that would mean you would be spending the healing surge to gain temporary hit points that you would then be losing to get a slight increase in attack and damage for one attack. Not a good trade. I am not sure why you would want to use the second half of Philosphy of Precision. Why would you want to delay the gaining of temporary hit points? Especially if doing so means you get half as many as normal? Philosophy of Wrath is actually pretty nice, though it would be better if the temporary hit points gained also included the damage from the extra dice in the crit. Get a weapon that is 2d6 Brutal 2 and use this for Brutal 3 on a 2d6 means 6 minimum damage, not bad. Bloodwake Scream at least seems like a striker power, at least when used against an enemy that isn't bloodied. But there are other classes, striker and otherwise, that gain a similar power option, even striker classes that you know actually have a striker feature. And of course without a striker feature you start feeling less like a striker if you aren't using this at will. Drink Deep will never be used. Well except if your Charisma modifier happens to be higher than +3 in heroic or +6 in paragon. Simply because again temporary hit points don't stack. And the Bloodknight is likely going to have their Aura up, and so will be triggering the aura with their melee attack anyway. Thirsty Blade is nice. Almost like a twin strike except you presumably can't attack the same target twice. It does give a bonus to damage, not for itself but for follow up attacks later in the round or during your next turn. Kind of reminds me of that one fire at will that monks can get, except that only attacks one person, still the monk also gets a striker feature. Unstaunchable Blow is uh well its ongoing damage. It means potentially some free damage on following rounds, but of course there is a save to get it to go away. Monks had an option to turn their Flurry of Blows into ongoing damage, which seemed interesting to me, especially combined with some other stuff. But it also meant their striker feature was weaker, because ongoing damage is weaker than a similar amount of regular damage. I am not sure if Crimson Curse is a striker power or not. On the one hand pitiful damage that is nowhere near a striker power. On the other hand if it brings the enemy close enough you get to make a basic attack which means two attacks against that enemy that turn. I guess Grisly Execution is kind of like Power Attack or whatever the essential's fighter encounter power was called. No attack roll, triggered on a hit. Though instead of multiple dice of additional damage it is a single die plus strength modifier damage. Though it starts to be actual respectable damage for 1st level if you are a Philosophy of Precision. But Philosophy of Precision leads to using Intelligence instead of Strength. But the Philosophy of Precision version of Grisly Execution still adds strength to damage instead of intelligence. Sanguine Storm doesn't seem like a striker power. It becomes a little more like a striker power if you manage to bloody someone with it, but otherwise it really isn't a striker power. Thicker than Water is not a Striker power. It seems more like a Leader power, or maybe even a Defender power. Admittedly the Vampire itself gets some things later on that are more leaderish, but that is much higher.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:28
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Actually, if you really whacked at the vampire it could become a solid enough controller, striker or defender (or maybe even leader, but I don't have that much of a concept for it). Give them the ability to select actual powers, make Blood Drinker deal your surge value in damage instead of d10s and have riders based on role and make Hidden Might better and something you can replace with other role functions. It would be increasing levels of complex.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:48
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Yeah it would be easier to improve the Vampire. And those are all things it needs. It would be nice if the Vampire had more options, more powers. Say options to improve their regeneration, options to improve their damage so they can actually optimize like weapon using or arcane characters. But yeah one of the biggest problems with the Vampire is that it simply doesn't have choices.
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Jan 7, 2015 05:51
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Okay, wow, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't realize it'd be that bad. Back to the drawing board. Edit Gonna try giving it a major overhaul. I was playing pretty close to the chest in terms of not wanting to make things overpowered, but I apparently went way too far the other direction, so let me toy with things. Edit2 Completely overhauled the class features. Gonna take another crack at the powers... tomorrow. For now, I will sleep. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 06:42 on Jan 7, 2015 |
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Jan 7, 2015 05:55
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My Lovely Horse posted:Multiclassing counts as "is a wizard" for feat prerequisites, and Arcane Implement Mastery is a class feature. I guess there aren't so many feats with an explicit class feature prerequisite that it was worth it to build in a "got here by multiclassing y/n" flag. Most things predicated on class features have a 'have class feature x y/n flag though', including things like sneak attack which you can't build that class without. Coding them is fairly simple to do, it's just that for some feats, particularly later ones, the coding was massively 
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Jan 7, 2015 18:27
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Poison Mushroom posted:Okay, wow, I knew it was going to be bad, but I didn't realize it'd be that bad. Back to the drawing board. Remember, in order for a striker to be "good" it needs a decent nova, the easiest way to accomplish that is through Multi-Attacks, look at the Ranger and Barbarian attack powers that are often used in the charop forums http://community.wizards.com/forums/103451 for some good ideas on what powers should look like for it to be good. The second big way that strikers can become "good" is through use of the charge package, which a heavy emphasis on MBA's in class design, will lead to. The second big component of strikers is their DPR. Now, this is less important than the nova, but for a Striker to be decent you want them to At-Will be able to do between 20-30 damage in heroic, 40-60 in paragon and 60-90 in Epic. The other thing I would recommend is to not worry about these multiple philosophy designs you have going through your head, work on 1 "philosophy" path, get it right, then work on the secondary set of choices and riders. Do Not bite off more than you can chew.
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Jan 7, 2015 21:39
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These days it's mostly multi-attacks and elemental damage abuse. Charge package is OK but not amazing. And yeah, if you're intending to design a striker that's competitive with strikers in general, it needs a nova that kills a standard, ideally without an AP using only encounter resources. If you're just designing a character for your home game, the most important thing is that you make something that matches your group's general level of optimisation. But I'd really ask... why do you need to homebrew? This reads like something you could trivially reflavour from basically any striker class. Hell (for a given value of striker) it already basically IS the blackguard.
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Jan 7, 2015 22:00
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Speaking of Blackguards, I had an idea for a "remix" where
The consensus seemed to be "it's a good start."
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Jan 8, 2015 00:30
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thespaceinvader posted:If you're just designing a character for your home game, the most important thing is that you make something that matches your group's general level of optimisation. This here is probably the single most important bit of character creation advice you will ever receive. There is nothing more irritating than being a member of a group that's generally low-op except for the guy who built the twinked-out striker; the striker ends up melting everything and the rest of the group gets to feel like their contribution is meaningless. T
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Jan 8, 2015 01:00
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Is there any official naval/ship combat info release? I have an idea of what to do if there isn't, and would like to run it by you guys, but I didn't know if anything existed.
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Jan 8, 2015 02:43
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Not really, I don't think. I've played naval combat rules in a couple of cases, but never been satisfied with them.
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Jan 8, 2015 10:15
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Moriatti posted:Is there any official naval/ship combat info release? I have an idea of what to do if there isn't, and would like to run it by you guys, but I didn't know if anything existed. There's some information on boats and ship combat in Adventurer's Vault.
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Jan 9, 2015 06:07
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My advice for ship-to-ship combat would be just to run a melee on the deck of your ship, with skill checks needed to steer the ship into a position where it can fire on the enemy, to man the cannons, and so on. Do this while the enemy ship has adds swinging across onto your deck, cannons pounding your ship with AOE, and you've got a pretty cool fight. Think of it like the ship battles in Pirates of the Carribean. Nobody cared where the ships were relative to one another except inasmuch as whether they were in cannon range. What mattered was the things that were going on on the deck.
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Jan 9, 2015 08:59
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Whybird posted:My advice for ship-to-ship combat would be just to run a melee on the deck of your ship, with skill checks needed to steer the ship into a position where it can fire on the enemy, to man the cannons, and so on. Do this while the enemy ship has adds swinging across onto your deck, cannons pounding your ship with AOE, and you've got a pretty cool fight. My plan was to do something like this, except have it so that the wheel, sail and canons would be standard actions to interact with, changing the direction and speed, or allowing an attack from that direction. Then have lots of boarding and the like. I might just obscure that for narrative info, we'll see how my players react. Arivia posted:There's some information on boats and ship combat in Adventurer's Vault. Is it any good?
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Jan 9, 2015 16:58
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Moriatti posted:Is it any good?
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Jan 9, 2015 17:28
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Personally, I'd probably just run the whole thing as a skill challenge, with the results impacting the ensuing boarding fight. So maybe they've got two passes around the table. Each round one player can make a hard roll to pilot the ship (aided by athletics checks from others manning the rigging). For each miss, there's a 3x3 zone of fire on their ship at the start of the fight as they take cannon fire. Existing fires can be put out with an athletics check. For each cannon they have, someone can make a moderate ranged attack roll. Each success reduces the number of minions in the fight by 2. A critical hit removes a standard instead. Once the fight starts each fire has a chance to spread along one edge, and if 50% of the deck is on fire their ship starts sinking or the rigging starts on fire or whatever. Stuff like that. If you don't want to force a fight you can also keep track of ship damage and let them try to use their piloting roll to avoid the boarding action instead of avoiding fire. In that case a successful piloting check gives them another round to do stuff.
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Jan 9, 2015 17:54
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Moriatti posted:My plan was to do something like this, except have it so that the wheel, sail and canons would be standard actions to interact with, changing the direction and speed, or allowing an attack from that direction. Then have lots of boarding and the like. I might just obscure that for narrative info, we'll see how my players react. Should probably make that a minor action. No one is going to give up a standard to change the ship's speed if there's enemies on deck. Besides, it would be super heroic looking to have the players use minor actions to kick the wheel or grab a line to change the sails (hell that'd be super awesome, minor action to grab a rigging, move action to ride the sail with the wind for a few squares).
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Jan 9, 2015 19:39
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We're level 21 now with our Magic: the Gathering campaign I've been running, and everyone's loving it. Our rogue picked Dark Wanderer for his epic destiny. The ability to walk pretty much anywhere you need to with only a few restrictions is really intriguing, and he's very excited about never really being able to die (off screen resurrection and teleport). Has anyone played this? Did it lead to some really cool stuff?
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Jan 9, 2015 19:40
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Generally for SCs I find scaling difficulty by action used to be really useful - so there's a genuinely difficult decision to make if it's critical that $thing happens right now - you can do a check as a minor at a hard DC, move at a moderate DC, or standard at an easy DC.
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Jan 9, 2015 19:56
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theironjef posted:Should probably make that a minor action. No one is going to give up a standard to change the ship's speed if there's enemies on deck. Besides, it would be super heroic looking to have the players use minor actions to kick the wheel or grab a line to change the sails (hell that'd be super awesome, minor action to grab a rigging, move action to ride the sail with the wind for a few squares). That does sound pretty cool, I'll probably make it a minor for named characters, and standard for minions. I'm toying with the idea of giving them expendable crewmen anyways. ImpactVector posted:Stuff like that. If you don't want to force a fight you can also keep track of ship damage and let them try to use their piloting roll to avoid the boarding action instead of avoiding fire. In that case a successful piloting check gives them another round to do stuff. Generally this stuff seems helpful, but why would anyone pick 4e if not to force fights often, since that's really the only strengths the game has?
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Jan 9, 2015 20:59
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