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Torchlighter posted:So I've been poring over feat lists for the past couple of weeks in preparation for a new group, and I'm looking to cut down the number of feats. Admittedly, I'm using just about every feat I can find, but what is the general consensus on feats that can be dropped, or feats that should be included in general? There are quite a few you can just outright chuck (any feat bonus to any NAD of less than 1 per tier, any feat bonus to a single NAD of less than +2/3/4, any feat bonus to hit of less than 1 per tier, Barreling Charge, dozens of others) but there's no core list, and as others have noted, you're better off helping people to build if they're brand new, or letting them read the guides if they're used to the concept of building a character. There's really no practical way to boil out the poo poo in 4e's feat list.
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Jul 20, 2015 17:40
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I wanna make the most rockingest Tiefling Bard ever. I tried my hand at it, but I'm not sure how good it actually is. Any good feats/powers I should get?
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Jul 21, 2015 06:19
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Go straight implement powers, reskin everything to have your tiefling act like a glam rock show, and take all the feats related to skill upgrades.
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Jul 21, 2015 12:27
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Mustache Ride posted:Go straight implement powers, reskin everything to have your tiefling act like a glam rock show, and take all the feats related to skill upgrades. That's what I did with my first try, more or less. Good. He's gonna be the rainbow in the dark.
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Jul 21, 2015 15:26
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MonsieurChoc posted:I wanna make the most rockingest Tiefling Bard ever. I tried my hand at it, but I'm not sure how good it actually is. Any good feats/powers I should get? It's honestly difficult to make a bad o-bard as long as you stick to the powers that match your secondary stats.
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Jul 22, 2015 18:06
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thespaceinvader posted:It's honestly difficult to make a bad o-bard as long as you stick to the powers that match your secondary stats. Mostly, the problem is that there are zillion feats and I have no idea which one to pick.
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Jul 23, 2015 08:44
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Got a quick question about the Zeitgeist Path, which i got suckered into DMing this weekend (good that I haven't planned anything for my evenings ... ). Is the monster math in there already the new math? And does it matter? I heard nothing but praise for it, so I assume the encounters are solid as they are.
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Jul 23, 2015 09:07
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cybertier posted:Got a quick question about the Zeitgeist Path, which i got suckered into DMing this weekend (good that I haven't planned anything for my evenings ... ).
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Jul 23, 2015 15:27
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MonsieurChoc posted:Mostly, the problem is that there are zillion feats and I have no idea which one to pick. At first level? Expertise, or superior implement proficiency.
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Jul 23, 2015 17:27
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Has anyone had any experience running Masterplan from a Windows tablet?
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Jul 27, 2015 00:18
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Torchlighter posted:So I've been poring over feat lists for the past couple of weeks in preparation for a new group, and I'm looking to cut down the number of feats. Admittedly, I'm using just about every feat I can find, but what is the general consensus on feats that can be dropped, or feats that should be included in general? It might actually be easier to start with the assumption that all feats are terrible and excluded, and then try and find the must have feats, rather than going through one by one to find the bad ones. I seem to recall most people thinking the essentials feats were mostly good ones. Certainly the essentials expertise feats are, well, essential. Some of them are good enough that even if you use one of the many proposed math fixes out there and strip away the need for the +1/tier to-hit bonus, they'd still be worth taking. If you go to the character op boards you'd probably be safe including any of the blue/sky blue/gold feats that get mentioned in the various guides. The multiclass feats are mostly great as well, a fair number of people think you could roll all the power swap feats either into the base multiclass feat or into a second feat that lets you power swap. I'm not sure how many quality of life adjustments you are willing to make to the game. The teamwork feats, the ones that give you a tiny bonus which grows bigger the more party members take it, they work better as DM tools. Hand them out as bonuses instead of hoping players will communicate about which feat to all take / hope every build has room to include an extra feat. If you finish this list please release it to the internet, it would be a community service.
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Jul 29, 2015 17:10
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I haven't made very many monsters before and it's been a long time since I last did. Please critique this for balance?pre:Mudling Swarm Level 1 Skirmisher Tiny elemental animate (water, earth) (swarm) 100 xp HP 27; Bloodied 13 Initiative: +0 AC 10, Fortitude 14, Reflex 7, Will 10 Perception +4 Speed 2, climb 2, burrow 2 Darkvision Immune disease, poison Resist half damage from melee and ranged attacks; Vulnerable 5 to close and area attacks Traits Aquatic The elemental can breathe underwater. In aquatic combat, it gains a +2 bonus to attack rolls against nonaquatic creatures. Earth Glide The elemental can pass through earth and rock as if it were phasing. Swarm The swarm can occupy the same space as another creature, and an enemy can enter its space, which is difficult terrain. The swarm cannot be pulled, pushed, or slid by melee or ranged attacks. It can squeeze through any opening that is large enough for at least one of the creatures it comprises. Standard Actions Melee basic attack: Mud Punch At-Will Attack: Melee 1 (one creature); +7 vs. AC Hit: 1d8 + 5 damage, and the target cannot shift until the end of the elemental's next turn. Effect: Another Mudling Swarm within 2 squares of the enemy can shift 1 square towards the enemy. Smother (encounter) Trigger: An adjacent enemy becomes immobilized or helpless. Effect (Immediate Reaction): The Mudlings can shift 1 square into the enemy's square and then begin to suffocate the enemy (see DMG p 159). After three rounds in which one or more Mudlings occupy the same square as the enemy, the enemy must take a DC20 Endurance check or lose one healing surge and continue to make checks. The check increases by 5 DC each round thereafter. The effect is canceled as soon as the enemy is no longer helpless or immobilized, or if another character succeeds on a DC20 Healing check. Str 12 (+1) Dex 7 (-2) Wis 9 (-1) Con 16 (+3) Int 1 (-5) Cha 7 (-2) Alignment unaligned Languages - quote:Mudlings are little fist-sized glops of wet-looking muddy stone which glide, sluglike, along floors, walls, and ceilings throughout the mines. Each mudling on its own is essentially harmless. However, whenever the Elemental Evil Mudborn in Room 9 is awakened, the mudlings swarm, attacking anything living within the mine. Because they can pass directly through rock, the mudlings can completely ignore doors and other barriers; a mudling (or mudling swarm) can pass through (burrow) any native rock surface as if it weren't there. They're not supposed to be particularly difficult to kill, mostly due to being very slow and having a terrible reflex defense. I initially made them as minions, but I couldn't find a single other example of a minion swarm, and the 1 HP thing meant the swarm traits (take half damage, etc.) didn't matter at all.
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Jul 30, 2015 01:51
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With those defenses they're likely to be dead before they can do anything, doubly so with a speed of 2. Anything you can walk away from and it takes it two turns just to catch up isn't really a skirmisher.  Usual defenses for a level 1 creature are AC 15, F/R/W 13, give or take 1 or 2 points.Smother is never going to happen. You'd have to pair them with a creature that immobilizes or makes helpless to begin with, and between forced movement, granted movement, and low defenses, they're just not going to be in the same space as a PC for three rounds. A lot of combat encounters only last three rounds. From the description I think I'd model these as a trap or hazard, not an enemy. Something like a moving zone that while you're in it, you're suffocating. You have to keep moving or it'll creep up on you. You can attack the zone and it'll disappear, but a new one will pop up from the rock right away because there are so many of the things. Pair that with monsters that impair movement and it should be a decent challenge.
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Jul 30, 2015 07:13
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I agree with what My Lovely Horse said. If you really want to keep smother in its current form, drop the three turn waiting period. That's very long and never gonna happen. Does disease immunity really do anything? I can't recall any disease player powers. 2 speed is relly slow. Looking at the oozes in the monster vault, they all have 4 or 3 speed. This thing seems very similar to an ooze and a modified version of the green slime from the monster vault's Engulf power would be a lot more 'fun' than smother, I think. As they'll be moving through rock, I'd give them tremorsens eor blindsight rather than darkvision.
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Jul 30, 2015 12:52
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So in my mid-Paragon Zeitgeist campaign, one of the coolest NPCs has met his demise. Rush is (was) a half-elf with a pair of … well, basically extensible batons. That are also button-activated immovable rods. He used these for a number of tricks, including… * Effective flight through brachiation * Immunity to forced movement * Pinning a creature against a wall (or floor if they were prone) * Using one as cover against a single enemy Now, the magic items themselves don’t provide any of this, of course, but one of my players wants to make a Thief who can do some of the same tricks. I think this is awesome, since I love the concept, but I want to think about some resource costs. Here’s my own gut feeling; let me know if you think this is unnecessarily costly or incredibly powerful. Feat: (Multiclass), based on Spiked Chain mastery. Gain proficiency in the use of these weapons, call them 1d8, reach 2, maces, light, allow sneak attack. Opens up the following stuff: Feat: Rod Defense. Gains the Defensive property Utility Swap @ lv10: At-Will, move action, fly your speed and hover but you must at all times keep at least one hand on a rod. Encounter Swap @ (whocares, replacing a use of Backstab): 2[w]+Attr. On hit, slide target 1 and shift 2. As long as you remain within 2 squares, if the creature is prone or adjacent to an object at least as large as itself, it is Restrained (escape DC 25). Reliable. Upgrades to 3[w] at 17th level. Can use w/ sneak attack.
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Jul 30, 2015 16:26
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A feat for Defensive is pretty bad; make it give a +1 (or even +2) shield bonus to AC and Ref. Otherwise looks solid.
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Jul 30, 2015 17:17
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thespaceinvader posted:A feat for Defensive is pretty bad; make it give a +1 (or even +2) shield bonus to AC and Ref. Otherwise looks solid. Or... poo poo, why not another utility swap instead? Minor (move?) action, at will, +2 AC/Reflex vs a single enemy. Eh.... I prefer Defensive rolled into the first feat, I think...
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Jul 30, 2015 17:25
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I was just thinking that a lot of what you were going for (double defensive weapon, reach) could be gained from Staff Expertise and Staff Fighting, and everything else could be rolled into a magic weapon enhancement with properties like Rogues can use Sneak Attack class feature with weapon and can be considered a light weapon for Rogue attack purposes or whatever. Then make the movement an encounter item power and the pin maybe a daily? The multiclass sounds fine, though, if an item enhancement isn't what you're going for. I'd definitely just roll the defensive property in there. I wouldn't make it reach 2 since even spiked chain can't get that without some weird class/paragon path shenanigans, though if you make it a staff instead of a mace, that reach 2 is in your grasp with Staff Expertise. Edit: Other thoughts... Flight as not only a utility but a level 10 at will seems kind of overpowered. Lyrander Wind Rider paragon path doesn't get that until 12 and it's a daily minor for an encounter. Paladins have a level 8 utility for the same thing, but the flight portion doesn't activate until 18. Then again, hypothetically there is a feat trade involved, but I am not sure that balances it out. Mecha Gojira fucked around with this message at 18:23 on Jul 30, 2015 |
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Jul 30, 2015 18:14
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Yeah, that would work fine. Minor for +2 AC/ref vs a single enemy is pretty poor too, I'd look at something like Disruptive Strike but without the damage. II to make an attack roll with normal bonuses, hit cancels a given attack.
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Jul 30, 2015 18:19
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My Lovely Horse posted:With those defenses they're likely to be dead before they can do anything, doubly so with a speed of 2. Anything you can walk away from and it takes it two turns just to catch up isn't really a skirmisher. The Belgian posted:I agree with what My Lovely Horse said. Hmm. I guess I should explain my thinking a little. The idea is that alone, they'd be completely unthreatening, and in fact I planned to infest the entire dungeon with them. They'd generally ignore the PCs until/unless they start trying to remove ore from the mine (which is what angered the Elemental Evil Mudborn in Room 9 to begin with). The smother effect is modeled after the rules in the DMG for suffocation, which says that you get three rounds before you have to start taking checks. I keyed it off of immobilization in part because an unconscious enemy is considered immobilized, but I didn't want to specifically key off of unconsciousness because I wanted them to also be able to attack someone who was pinned by fallen boulders or encased in a mud trap too. It might actually make more sense to model them as a trap or hazard, but then I couldn't use them as allies of the Elemental Evil Mudborn when they do that encounter. Maybe I should beef up these guys as ally monsters and then stat out a hazard/trap to model how they'd work when they're just casually scooting around the mine's tunnels. Their main threat would have been against the miners whose skeletons are scattered throughout the mine. I figured they were attacked by dozens of these at a time, including many blocking their exits; the Mudborn directed them and they appeared from within walls and floors and stuff. One or two wouldn't have been a big threat to any given miner, but once they're being attacked by five or six, being knocked unconscious and then (without aid from others) being suffocated within a few minutes and then dissolved. I could speed them up and improve their defenses a bit though. I guess. Hmm. I'll give it some more thought. Thanks for the help though.
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Jul 31, 2015 02:20
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Jul 31, 2015 11:49
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So simple question, but, what's the ideal ratio of ranged to melee units? Does it matter if none of the ranged attackers are strikers? Currently at 1 ranged for every 2 melee.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:29
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4e is, perhaps unfortunately, very much geared towards melee over ranged. Controllers are universally ranged, some leaders are, NO defenders, and like two strikers, both of whom would be far better in melee range.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:44
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ProfessorCirno posted:4e is, perhaps unfortunately, very much geared towards melee over ranged. Yeah quote:Controllers are universally ranged, yeah quote:some leaders are Yeah quote:NO defenders yeah* quote:and like two strikers quote:both of whom would be far better in melee range. what.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:48
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fatherdog posted:yeah* You can kind of make a ranged paladin. It's difficult but doable.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:49
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fatherdog posted:what. I was thinking rangers and sorcerers; melee rangers will can greatly outdamage ranged ones, and a lot of the real dumb sorcerer bullshit requires you be in the face of baddies. Now that I think about it, there are more...but it doesn't help. There's ranged rogues but they're not all that well supported, and technically thieves can focus on crossbows or thrown daggers, but again, will fall behind ones that just charge spam. Warlocks could go full ranged, but then they lose the usage of their interrupt powers. There's just a ton of support for melee attackan' and far fewer for staying in range. That's not even touching how leaders can turn even more support towards melee characters, as the number of "make an MBA" or "your ally can charge" abilities outnumbers "make any basic attack" ones by a monsterous degree. This is I should note before you get into the real stupid horseshit like that one heavy blade that does a blast of damage every time you hit with a fire based attack, so long as you're in melee.
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Aug 1, 2015 03:58
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Anyway, I guess that answers my question. The party should be fine. I was just trying to decide if my ranger should be capable of whipping out a ranged weapon if needed, but it's sounding like I don't considering just how ingrained melee is to everything.
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Aug 1, 2015 04:29
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Unknown Quantity posted:Anyway, I guess that answers my question. The party should be fine. I was just trying to decide if my ranger should be capable of whipping out a ranged weapon if needed, but it's sounding like I don't considering just how ingrained melee is to everything. Getting a magical Javelin and some form of quick draw makes things a lot easier and also improves the usefulness of distruptive strike
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Aug 1, 2015 04:35
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fatherdog posted:Getting a magical Javelin and some form of quick draw makes things a lot easier and also improves the usefulness of distruptive strike I actually did have a plan of using the fact that I'm a Thri-Kreen (for fluff purposes I'm not actually a giant mantis-woman so there's logistics issues of picking Thri-Kreen Shooter or Thri-Kreen Thrower unless you can think of a way to retrieve use, and in the case of a thrown weapon, catch the thrown item with swords in each hand), taking Fast Hands as my L6 utility and wearing a Battle Harness to be able to put my blades away and whip out a ranged weapon and still use it in the same round, after which I could stow it and draw my blades the following round. I still have a heroic-tier feat slot open too for a superior or exotic ranged weapon but I figured that was too much mucking about just for something that won't happen all that often.
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Aug 1, 2015 04:43
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Farbond Spellblade is one of my favorite things for that when I think I'll get decent use out of the ranged function.
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Aug 1, 2015 08:57
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Actually on the note of strikers, and ranged strikers, and specifically warlocks, I've never actually made one. I've made warlock hybrids, but never pure class, and given all my warlock hybrids are inevitably melee, I assume it's at least a little different. What's a good way to do i, assuming I don't want to use bullshit cheesy dumbfuckery (like spamming Hellish Rebuke then using an item to damage myself)? There's a class guide on the WotC forums but the last ten pages are filled with people saying it's useless so I don't even know.
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Aug 1, 2015 09:10
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Archer Rangers, Warlocks, Ranged Rogues, Sorcerers, basically, are the only ranged striker classes and NONE of them want to be at very long range. Rangers want to get prime shot and called shot. Sorcerers want to use Flame Spiral. Ranged Rogues are using Daggers anyway so probably max range 6, and will be using some melee powes anyway because there aren't enough good ranged ones. Warlocks... well, Prime Shot again. Warlocks are probably the rangediest of them. And there's a systems reason for this: 4e is designed for the party to stay together. The general assumption is that everyone soaks roughly their fair share of hits and damage, and being off on your own is a great way to either a: not take your fair share of hits and damage, and therefore last a lot longer than everyone else, and still be kicking when their surges have run out, or b: get ambushed and murdered by a lone stalker monster you can't handle on your own. 4e is not a game where that 30/60 greatbow is ever good for anything other than not needing to check whether you're in short range or not. Warlocks in general got a lot better when the Elemental Pact came out, because now they can bring their own vulnerability cheesing. They're a bit of a weird class, what they really want to be doing is swinging once a turn, every turn (including everyone else's), because Curse gives a tonne of damage and is 1/turn.
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Aug 1, 2015 09:44
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ProfessorCirno posted:What's a good way to do i, assuming I don't want to use bullshit cheesy dumbfuckery (like spamming Hellish Rebuke then using an item to damage myself)? One of my favorite errata I can remember is when they patched the Sorcerer's lightning strike to not be able to target yourself with the arcs. Like, my friends let me get away with flagrantly cheating by dealing the arc damage around corners or through closed doors because we think it's funny ("The lighting bolt knocks on the door, and zaps the orc answering it in the face like we've fallen into looney tunes. for 4 damage."). But there's just something special about patch notes about not shooting yourself in the face, on top of reminding you that your brand of bullshit is not as bad as it seems 
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Aug 1, 2015 09:53
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Radiant warlocks are a lot of fun post-errata. They can be kind of a headache if you need to squeeze every last bit of functionality out of them , but they are largely long range and can provide monsters with a lot of fun catch 22 scenarios for light control.
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Aug 1, 2015 14:59
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Reminds me of my favorite errata notes for a power I forget the name of now. It was a Wizard daily that let you teleport the target to any place you could "see". The errata changed it so now it had a range on the teleport with some developer commentary to the effect of "Now you cannot teleport the target to the distant crater of Mt. Lava" or something. I want to believe it was an actual thing that happened during a play session, in front of the editors, and they quickly realised their mistake and had the good enough humor to note it in the patch notes.
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Aug 1, 2015 16:06
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Agent Boogeyman posted:Reminds me of my favorite errata notes for a power I forget the name of now. It was a Wizard daily that let you teleport the target to any place you could "see". The errata changed it so now it had a range on the teleport with some developer commentary to the effect of "Now you cannot teleport the target to the distant crater of Mt. Lava" or something. I want to believe it was an actual thing that happened during a play session, in front of the editors, and they quickly realised their mistake and had the good enough humor to note it in the patch notes. That would probably be the errata for Space Vortex, a psion augmented at-will from the PHB3. WotC posted:Space Vortex There is the Cosmic Soul Epic Destiny that has the level 30 ability of "all of your ranged powers and area powers have a range of 'sight"" but I don't think it really works with this one (though you can pick up a target from far away and drop it within 10 squares). Any power that lets you teleport a target to a space within range would work though.
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Aug 1, 2015 17:43
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Keeping everything in melee is I think at least in part an artifact of 4th edition being a game about miniatures on a tabletop. It's pretty difficult to conduct battles at 30 squares' distance on a typical squared game mat. You can artificially keep the combatants apart with like a bottomless chasm, but there's so many teleport and flight powers that that's only going to work at low levels, or if you cheese it a lot with like teleportation-prevention fields etc. You could design one or two encounters to be fixed at long range, but that's going to get very old very quickly. Especially since it completely fucks over melee characters. So ultimately I think it's disappointing but a reasonable design choice to accept that for practical reasons, the game is conducted at close range, with players and the DM clustered around a table with a 2' by 2' or so mat between them on which they have miniatures moving around.
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Aug 1, 2015 18:30
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I don't think it has anything to do with miniatures actually. It most likely has more to do with not wanting to segregate the encounter between ranged and melee classes, and sticking to the D&D core stuff like humans moving 30 feet a round and a grid square being 5ft. it's just more interesting to have everyone engaging close to each other then it is to have combatants regularly be 3-4 turns away from each other.
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Aug 2, 2015 16:39
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I find it difficult to play out a battle that's large enough for the range on a longbow to matter, but on the other hand that probably also has to do with the fact that actually playing a game at that range would make ranged attacks quite a bit more powerful because of the interaction between how many rounds it would take to run to a ranged character from max and how many hits it would take to kill that approaching enemy. And then I realize the range of a longbow itself is probably a holdout from however long ago that it has to be "realistic"
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Aug 2, 2015 16:48
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Functionally longbows should be range: do you have line of effect? And generally, they are. I think once or twice I've come across it mattering in the Against the Giants mods where the maps are enormous, and in Epic where... yup, the maps are enormous... plus one time when we came over the hill and avoided a guard raising the alarm by sniping him backwards through an arrow slit at max range. Crossbow Expertise. Ignoring cover. Yeah.
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Aug 2, 2015 18:39
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