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Average damage REALLY helps with speed, especially when using multi-attacking monsters. Really, really helps. I'd advise it in basically all cases, unless you have one of those silly unkillable revenant builds on the table, in which case, tell that player he takes no damage and proceed to kill everyone else.
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Feb 23, 2015 23:09
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Mordiceius posted:Thanks for this awesome idea. I'll pass it along to the player and see what he thinks. We aren't playing a bleeding edge optimized game as these are all newbie players. Since this is all their first time playing a game, I'm not planning on being super punishing or anything. We're more for fun than SUPER OPTIMIZED CHALLENGE. Those aren't opposite sides of a spectrum, really. I really like optimizing inside of a gimmick. Cirno's gun-kata build sounds really fun to me. I'm working on an unarmed/hand crossbow debuffer rogue based on John Reese from Person of Interest and it'll be fun to see how far I can push that. Edit: Rouge != rogue 
Echophonic fucked around with this message at 00:41 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 00:22
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Echophonic posted:debuffer rouge This fucker gets real annoying in paragon when you make it impossible for an enemy to actually hit anything with all the penalties to their attack rolls.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:29
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Generic Octopus posted:This fucker gets real annoying in paragon when you make it impossible for an enemy to actually hit anything with all the penalties to their attack rolls. We had a psion in our last campaign where I ran a brawler fighter. My GM was not a happy camper some fights.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:42
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ProfessorCirno posted:Two fisted crossbow rogue works pretty well, just make sure you go drow (or let him take a specific drow racial feat, Ruthless Hunter). I just played this very character concept in a quick 4e game we did tonight when our 13th Age group half fell apart. It was a blast flipping around and shooting fools in their dumb loving faces. It may have helped that in the single combat we had, we had more crits than I've seen in a single encounter in my life. The DM hcrit like 3 times, I crit twice and the other two players must've crit at least 4 times each. We also got two nat 20s on skill checks. Dice gods were feeling frisky tonight.
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Feb 24, 2015 00:52
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I'm making some back-ups for a 4e game I'm in. I'm curious what are some good hybrid combos as I'm interested in experimenting with them.
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Feb 24, 2015 04:45
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Covok posted:I'm making some back-ups for a 4e game I'm in. I'm curious what are some good hybrid combos as I'm interested in experimenting with them. Ranger|Cleric is pretty typical; Battle Cleric's Lore gets you a +2 shield bonus & scale mail, solving potential problems for melee rangers who want Str & Wis but also would need Dex for AC. You could also do Ranger|Fighter but you'd need the Hybrid Talent feat to get fighter armor, whereas with |Cleric that's just a default choice. Fighter|Rogue with the Vigilante theme for a simple catch-22 with Riposte Strike. Assassin or Executioner|Rogue MC Warlock (or Warlock|Rogue MC Assassin) for permahide/stealth shenanigans, needs to be level 4 or a level 2 human to get all the feats for that. Executioner|Warlock gets to use both its striker features for pretty good damage output, especially for Heroic tier games. Swordmage(Assault)|Warlock is just really good. Paladin|Warlock works well too and has feats specific to that combo. Generic Octopus fucked around with this message at 05:10 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 05:04
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My Lovely Horse posted:In addition to simpler monsters I think I'm also gonna go with averaging monster damage for a while and see how that works out. Speed gain will probably be negligible, but maybe it helps if I don't have to devote brainspace to first-grade maths at random intervals while six people wait for the result. What if you assigned the job of handling the damage rolls to the players? Instead of  "Take 12 damage" just tell them "Take 3d8+2 damage".
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Feb 24, 2015 13:40
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Not a bad idea, but I like to track their HP in Masterplan so the leaders can see at a glance who's hurting, and I'd have to wait for them to gather dice, make the roll and report the result back to me. If I make them ask each other who needs healing the most it's gonna turn into a whole debate. Plus someone might miss an opportunity to interrupt something when they're rolling and subtracting while the rest moves on.
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Feb 24, 2015 13:51
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My Lovely Horse posted:Not a bad idea, but I like to track their HP in Masterplan so the leaders can see at a glance who's hurting, and I'd have to wait for them to gather dice, make the roll and report the result back to me. If I make them ask each other who needs healing the most it's gonna turn into a whole debate. Plus someone might miss an opportunity to interrupt something when they're rolling and subtracting while the rest moves on. I've been running Zeitgeist without Masterplan, but now that we're hitting Paragon, I'm reevaluating.
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Feb 24, 2015 16:05
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Covok posted:I'm making some back-ups for a 4e game I'm in. I'm curious what are some good hybrid combos as I'm interested in experimenting with them. What do you want to play? Role, race, melee, ranged, weapon, implement? There are a tonne of good hybrids out there but the roles vary wildly. Ranger|Cleric and Barbarian|Cleric are basically the base class but better (|Cleric fixes AC for almost no cost), Executioner|Warlock is a chargespammer. Swordmage|Warlock is a good defender-striker combo. There are leader hybrids out the wazoo, mostly |Warlord or |Artificer. The classic on that score is Artificer|Warlord/Spell Commander, aka Killswitch.
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Feb 24, 2015 22:10
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Hows monk|ranger?
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Feb 25, 2015 06:46
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At least with the online builder, it only gives you one monk unarmed strike so certain powers and feats requiring dual wielding for bonuses get mad at you. Can't speak of the actual mechanics, though.
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Feb 25, 2015 06:55
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I have a question about adjacency and opportunity attacks. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 If my PC is at 1 and an enemy at 5: Could I hit him with a melee basic? Would he provoke an opportunity attack if he moves? Also, is it possible for the same movement action to provoke multiple attacks of opportunity against the same unit? Like if I'm at 1 and the enemy moves from 4 to 2 then 2 to 3, would I get to attack twice?
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Feb 25, 2015 18:59
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dbzfandiego posted:Hows monk|ranger? If you are good, you can make it not suck. But it is generally weaker than just going straight ranger or straight monk.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:03
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Fumaofthelake posted:I have a question about adjacency and opportunity attacks. Yes, you can hit the bad guy with a basic attack, and he would provoke ONE opportunity attack if he moves (rather than shifting) from the PC at 1, unless the enemy's power specifically states he can move without provoking OAs. Opportunity attacks are 1/turn, so you'd only get one, but if there were another PC at 3 and the enemy moved from 5 to 2, it would eat two OAs.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:04
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Yes, diagonals are adjacent so you can hit him and if he moves without shifting you can hit him with an OA. You only get one OA per turn (per individual person's turn, not per overall round) so you can only hit that particular guy with an OA once on his turn.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:05
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If there are PCs at 2 and 9, would a monster at 5 be flanked? Are OA resolved before movement? IE if a monster is flanked before he moves but not AFTER he moves, would we get the flanking bonus to our OAs?
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Feb 25, 2015 19:46
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Flanking: no, you'd have to be on opposite sides or corners: 2 and 8, 1 and 9 and so on. (For enemies larger than a single square, it's enough to be on opposite sides, the flankers don't have to be directly opposite from each other.) Opportunity attacks are resolved like interrupts, i.e. they happen before their trigger finishes. The trigger is "enemy leaves square" so you make the attack before the enemy has actually left and, in your example, do get the bonus.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:54
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dbzfandiego posted:Hows monk|ranger? Probably pretty terrible, since monk is melee implement and ranger is ranged weapon, if you want the version where the stats match, and Striker|Striker is always iffy because the whole is less than the sum of the parts unless they have an in-class MBA - because they lose striker features like Quarry and Flurry on off-turn stuff, and particularly leader grants. That being said, you could do it STR|DEX and not be awful, because the Monk has a few key move-action encounter attack powers which might let you double dip, and the STR|DEX monk build isn't awful. It's not going to be better than the sum of its parts, though.
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Feb 25, 2015 19:56
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Cool thanks for the info guys.
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Feb 25, 2015 20:02
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Hybrids are awesome, but if you aren't willing to put your homework in on the Charop forums, and read the handbooks there, just strict to single class builds. There are tons of ways for you to gently caress up a hybrid, especially striker or defender hybrids, that it generally just isn't worth doing.
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Feb 25, 2015 20:08
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Hybrids are an enjoyable technical exercise, but only 2% of the time are what people were hoping for when they hear about them. They're not even awesome in the way that baking your own bread or brewing your own beer is awesome; you have significantly fewer viable options than what you can get in the store. I don't think I would ever tell anyone totally new to them that they're awesome because (as Madmarker said) there are tons of ways to mess them up, due to the way class features are accessed.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:16
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The one upside to monk hybrids is that you can use their movement powers willy nilly since you're not tied to using their attack power right after.
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Feb 25, 2015 21:58
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The hybrid system is bad and we would have been better off without. The only good hybrids are the ones they didn't succeed in intentionally gimping because they left in, probably by oversight, key features that allow you to "double dip." Hybrid cleric is fantastic almost entirely because of taking the scale + invisible shield bonus option, which makes whatever Strength or Wis-based hybrid you hook it up to completely better than pure class. Warlock/executioner double dips on striker features, something that they specifically tried to prevent hybrid strikers from doing. Notably all the good hybrid options involve poaching a feature from the vastly over-supported core PHB classes. Outside of clearly overlooked combinations like this, hybrids are trash because of the mechanics and 4E's clunky ability score system (DTAS, and all). The rules for building them are absurd and in particular I pity anyone who tries to create one without the character builder. It's in general a strike against the system that you need a computer to build an optimized character and remember so much poo poo for you, but that's a subject for another post. And of course hybrid-building tends to attract new players who have no idea what they're doing because the entire unstated exercise in creating a hybrid is putting your system mastery to work. So they churn out some Frankenstein's monster character that moans piteously to itself about what evil deity was cruel enough to give it life. But multiclassing in D&D has almost always been lovely for any number of reasons, no reason to break that tradition.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:09
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The main exception to this is, as noted above, hybrid leaders. Hubrid leaders are what the hybrid system actually should be - making interesting combinations with interesting powers that mostly come out on a level with the two base classes or better, especially when the base classes are painfully under-supported and have some serious weak levels (looking at Artificers, in particular). 99% of hybrids are just dire, though.
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Feb 25, 2015 22:39
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I know I say this every time hybrids come up, but I played a Ranger|Rogue using a repeating crossbow, built purely out of books and the very old free offline builder (that only went up to level 3 and had, like, PHB1&2 + MP1 + Adventurer's Vault, IIRC) and it was pretty good times. But apparently there is some errata that says, "Hey you know how every rogue power says you can use a crossbow? We actually meant hand crossbows, only." so it doesn't actually work that great anymore.  But yeah, basically take [ranged combat advantage feat of your choosing], lean towards Rogue powers, and use Ranger powers w/ quarry if/when you don't have CA. I went for status effect powers, so it played sort of like a Hunter but way more damagey. I also built a Paladin|Barbarian but that only saw limited use.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:08
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The bright side of hybrids is that some vaguely out of the ordinary stuff ends up working out pretty well. Monk|Barbarian, for starters; it's mostly just a barbarian with a few slightly better dailies, a really good move-attack encounter, and truly absurd mobility. On the note of monks, I remember making a monk|rogue/fighter that also worked decently well by just going full Kenshiro. Basically most hybrids are bad, some are way too good, and a few - far TOO few - hit that golden middle ground of "interesting and good without being broken."
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Feb 25, 2015 23:33
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It probably wasn't way damagey FTR, or at least, it was probably less way damagey than either of the base classes would have been. For many, many reasons, not least because every ten shots (i.e. about 3 rounds of twin strike plus off-action plus minor plus AP) you have to spend a standard action to reload a repeating crossbow. The errata making them all hand crossbow only sucked balls, but because it stopped superior crossbow users from poaching rogue goodies, more than because it stopped rogues being good. The only thing you lost using a repeater is damage die size, which makes virtually no difference. Rogues were good already, it's just that daggers are very rarely not their best weapon option, because accuracy is king when a good chunk of your damage arises only if you hit with one big attack. Ranger|Rogue can work but it involves basically going STR|DEX, two daggers, taking all the minor- and off-action attacks from both classes, and using Twin Strike or Riposte Strike depending on which class's minor action attack you used that round, and something off-turn, and getting sneak attack and quarry wherever you can. You never use basics unless the Warlord lets you. Going MC fighter/Shock Trooper, most likely, although there's a strong argument for Blade Dancer too because of its sweet-rear end interrupt. Being able to pick up +1 to hit with hybrid talent is great, and you get a bunch of off-turn stuff, and the likes of Tumbling Strike and Snap Shot. Probably a little on the boring side for most people to play though given how much it's usually using at-wills and how few actual options it has on a turn-by-turn basis. Paladin|Barb could work, Warlord|Paladin is interesting. Warlord hybrids well with a lot of things due to the amount of secondary stat options and the amount of non-attack or basic-attack powers it has.
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Feb 25, 2015 23:36
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I think the thing that consistently makes Hybrids a bad choice is that the really obvious synergies turn out to be nonbos that have actually be cannily excised by the developers - e.g., you can't actually use a Warlock's hex with similar class features from other Striker classes, even though at first blush it looks awesome. A strict understanding of the rules is required to figure out what will or won't work and often times poaching a single Encounter or Daily from a different class is what makes a hybrid actually worth it, something a new player can't possibly do without an encyclopedic knowledge of multiple classes. This, and almost every Hybrid can be better reproduced in concept/theme by a pure class anyway. I believe in keeping classes pure.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:26
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I ended up making a Gnomish Wizard|Warlock multiclassed with bard because I wanted to make a character that could teleport everything all the time. I think it worked out pretty well. But some of that was also based on the time frame I made the character, as more wizard and warlock powers were released that teleported, the need to dip into a second class dropped. Some of the feats I was using also ended up being errata-ed into less usefulness.
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Feb 26, 2015 00:35
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Mendrian posted:I believe in keeping classes pure. What are your opinions on races, in 4e? 
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Feb 26, 2015 01:39
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Honestly the hybrids that interest me most are ones that carve a new niche. Like ok, ranger|cleric is basically "ranger but better but that sounds really loving boring. Contrasting to that the Monk|Barbarian is basically an anime samurai without the Avenger's religious undertones. It's a niche that isn't really IN 4e. I also like hybrids that sorta work to "save" a class. Paladin mark enforcement isn't all that great and it typically has lower damage, but hybrid them to warlock and they can gain far better damage, one or two Catch 22's, and at paragon can launch their mark enforcement damage into the goddamn stratosphere. Swordmage tends to be a much more passive Defender, but add a warlock hybrid and suddenly your MBA is amazing, which allows you to play far more aggressively. Monk has far lower single target damage then basically every other striker, and it has a big lack of multi-hits or minor actions, but hybrid it to a rogue and now you've got minor action attacks to spare (and multiclass fighter to gain some great multihits). For hybrids you really have to sorta consider what you give up and what you get - a step many players skip because you need a bit of a technical/mechanical mind to go through it all. Warlocks make fantastic hybrids because they have an at-will that any constitution or charisma character would love, a lot of powers that can be adapted into multiple roles, and generally a low cost of entry. Warlords make great hybrids because they have some legitimate non-attribute based actions. Cleric gives you a ton of goodies right at the gate; enough so that it can overcome the kinda high cost of not always having amazing powers. Wizards, in contrast, tend to make not so great hybrids, because Wizards are based almost solely around their encounter crushing Dailies, and hybriding makes you lose those. Strikers tend to suffer as hybrids because strikers are typically built around their damage mechanic which only applies to their class attacks, so striker hybrids want to either abandon their damage mechanic (Monk|Barbarian doesn't pay much attention to Flurry) or not need it in the first place (Ranger is going to be the highest damaging class even without quarry). I mean, the end thing is that hybriding is very mechanical, so it's real easy to make mistakes. It's not 3.x easy, but far more then 4e normally is.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:35
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thespaceinvader posted:What do you want to play? Role, race, melee, ranged, weapon, implement? Just in general, really. I'm playing around with the character builder. Sort of new to 4e. Just trying to create a cool mechanical concept to inspire a cool character concept. Hope that isn't so vague as to be useless and annoying.
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Feb 26, 2015 04:51
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Not annoying, but a bit useless. You typically want to figure out what you want to do before you try to do it, unless you're someone who lives for the mechanics and loves to dissect the math and put it back together.
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Feb 26, 2015 05:23
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My favourite hybrid I ever played was something I borrowed from the Charop boards called the Holy Prostrate. 1) Hybrid Cleric and Paladin together. You don't have to take Battle Cleric's Lore for this one. For your Paragon Path, take Hell's Keeper. 2) Pick Tiefling, dumping points into Charisma and Wisdom. 3) Take the feats Courageous Example, Dispater's Iron Discipline, Superior Will, Pacifist Healer, Resilient Focus and Hero's Poise. 4) Start dealing damage to bloodied enemies. Pacifist Healer stuns you for this until the end of your next turn. 5) Your next turn starts and Superior Will kicks in, granting you a save against your stun with a +10 bonus, guaranteeing your recovery. 6) Because you just saved against a stun, Hero's Poise and Courageous Example take effect, granting a +10 save bonus to the next ally to make a saving throw (+12 vs daze, stun, immobilise or restrain) and a +6 (+8 vs the same) bonus to all allies after that. 7) Spend the space between every turn whipping yourself into a frenzy, inspiring your party to shake off every effect the DM can throw at you. Since you're a Paladin you don't need to take actions to enforce your mark, so being stunned doesn't matter. Synergy! It's effective and super flavourful. Even in fights where status conditions aren't being thrown around all the time (rare in Paragon) you don't care because you can still lay down debuffs, mark enemies and heal your party as a decently useful leader|defender.
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Feb 26, 2015 14:32
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Hybriding is also my favorite way to fix a Seeker. Ranger|Seeker is really drat fun, something the Seeker alone can't say. You do want a dex/wis race to get 18 in your two attack stats, though, so there is that.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:03
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How viable would you folks say is a Revenant (Eladrin Soul) Swordmage|Avenger? My idea is to spam MBAs with a Battlecrazed Fullblade almost permanently bloodied. The character will start at level 9 or 10, so the feat requirements to get going are not that prohibitive. It seems to hold up on paper but juggling minor actions is going to take some thinking and starting with 16's on the primary/secondary stats makes me a bit nervous.
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Feb 26, 2015 15:54
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Covok posted:Just in general, really. I'm playing around with the character builder. Sort of new to 4e. Just trying to create a cool mechanical concept to inspire a cool character concept. Hope that isn't so vague as to be useless and annoying. Basically completely useless, yes. Either find a mechanical idea you actually want to play, or find a theme you want to build around, you'll get somewhere. If what you want to do is noodle around with the CB... why do you need to ask about it? GimmickMan posted:How viable would you folks say is a Revenant (Eladrin Soul) Swordmage|Avenger? My idea is to spam MBAs with a Battlecrazed Fullblade almost permanently bloodied. The character will start at level 9 or 10, so the feat requirements to get going are not that prohibitive. It seems to hold up on paper but juggling minor actions is going to take some thinking and starting with 16's on the primary/secondary stats makes me a bit nervous. Swordvenger is OK. INT|WIS. But don't do revenant, do something which has INT and WIS bumps, starting with 16is is painful even on an accurate class.
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Feb 26, 2015 19:09
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| # ? May 9, 2024 07:52 |
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What is everyone's opinion of the Monk class? I've got a rare opportunity to actually play a character myself coming up, and the sheer array of mobility options + punching LOTS of people spontaneously appealed to me. I've been looking for builds, and most people seem to be of the opinion that Monks aren't that huge on damage compared to other Strikers, but they're by far the most mobile and great at spreading damage among multiple targets. I've played with the idea of playing a Monk as a completely nuts vigilante type, who punches so hard the air pressure alone wrecks people (hence all the burst type attacks). Monk relies heavily on Dex, though; what would be the best ways to use a high Strength mod as well? (Aside from that Stone Fist Flurry of Blows ability.)
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Feb 27, 2015 19:35
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