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OneThousandMonkeys posted:This left them in a lurch because gnolls are really poorly focused and have an ability combo that is hard to do anything with. Yeah, Con/Dex is only useful to a single rogue build and a single assassin build. And that feat that turns their claws into short-swords is really sub par.
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Oct 11, 2015 04:23
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Also Iron Soul Monks. But yeah, that's three sub-builds in the whole game.
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Oct 11, 2015 04:57
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Eh, they have dex as an option, so they're fine. There are more optimal choices, yeah, but gnoll is perfectly good for any dex-based class in probably a solid 95%+ of games. IMO, bleeding edge char-p is probably more detrimental than helpful unless you're doing ultra-hardcore lair-assault poo poo.
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Oct 11, 2015 04:58
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You can make a pretty good gnoll battlemind, soaring blade monk, and assassin (I've never even dealt with Essentials rogues even though they're pretty good). Aside from maybe assassin none of these choices are "gnolly" unless you squint real hard and/or start reskinning. Their feats are in general awful and don't really support any of the things they're incidentally good at. They seemed to have wanted gnolls to be rangers, at which they are clearly lagging well behind many other choices. They would be a lot more favorable for certain things if you could trade out one of their bonuses for Strength or Charisma. The real issue is the ability score system.
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Oct 11, 2015 10:00
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Khizan posted:Eh, they have dex as an option, so they're fine. There are more optimal choices, yeah, but gnoll is perfectly good for any dex-based class in probably a solid 95%+ of games. IMO, bleeding edge char-p is probably more detrimental than helpful unless you're doing ultra-hardcore lair-assault poo poo. This is something that always strikes me as odd about the thread. The big selling point of 4e over other editions is supposed to be that it's pretty well balanced and there aren't any trap choices and it's hard to make a character that's really not good mechanically. And yet charop abounds.
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Oct 11, 2015 16:49
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Maxwell Lord posted:This is something that always strikes me as odd about the thread. The big selling point of 4e over other editions is supposed to be that it's pretty well balanced and there aren't any trap choices and it's hard to make a character that's really not good mechanically. And yet charop abounds. Ehh, it's balanced as long as you make sure you hit certain thresholds, mainly starting with an 18+ post racial in your main ability score and picking up the feat taxes (which most DM's give away for free anyway). As long as you hit those benchmarks, you'll do fine math-wise, even if you pick the trap options. I agree it's not particularly intuitive, but I'm a Death to Ability Scores kind of guy because I'm not a particular fan of loving a player over because they didn't quite understand how character creation works. This is of course different from say 3.5 or 5e, where you can gently caress up character creation from the get-go by picking a non-spell casting class on top of having to understand how ability scores work. But wow if anyone ever tells you that there aren't trap choices in 4e. In fact, the biggest complaint about 4e is basically feat and power bloat. And when you're sorting through literally dozens of powers and hundreds of feats, you are bound to come across some that are less optimal than others.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:13
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There will always be some choice that is better than others; it's pretty much impossible to have a game that doesn't work that way and certainly not in something as complex as DnD. The key is, how much better is the optimized character versus the unoptimized one? and what is the minimum level of optimization required to participate?
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Oct 11, 2015 17:20
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Maxwell Lord posted:This is something that always strikes me as odd about the thread. The big selling point of 4e over other editions is supposed to be that it's pretty well balanced and there aren't any trap choices and it's hard to make a character that's really not good mechanically. And yet charop abounds. The main thing is that it takes deliberate, serious effort to make a 4e character who can't pull their own weight. It's not just a case of deciding to be be a Rogue and then getting poo poo on forever like in every other D&D edition.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:23
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Mendrian posted:There will always be some choice that is better than others; it's pretty much impossible to have a game that doesn't work that way and certainly not in something as complex as DnD. The key is, how much better is the optimized character versus the unoptimized one? and what is the minimum level of optimization required to participate? I mean, you probably could have a game that works that way, but the feat options would have to be fairly bland. And probably less of them.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:42
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What are the feat taxes?
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Oct 11, 2015 17:42
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Expertise feats (+1 per tier to attack rolls) and Improved Defenses (+1 per tier to Fort, Reflex, and Will). Compared to other feats, they have such a major and universal benefit that they basically become mandatory for anyone. And that's lame.
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Oct 11, 2015 17:43
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P.d0t posted:I mean, you probably could have a game that works that way, but the feat options would have to be fairly bland. And probably less of them. (Actually it could very well be - design each class around one very specific theme, make the underlying mechanics simple and transparent enough that writing your own class is easy...)
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Oct 11, 2015 17:47
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Really Pants posted:The main thing is that it takes deliberate, serious effort to make a 4e character who can't pull their own weight. It's not just a case of deciding to be be a Rogue and then getting poo poo on forever like in every other D&D edition. Yeah, this. You can make a completely poo poo 4e character, but you've got to work at it and it's not like you can really gently caress it up by mistake. You have to look at the loving paladin and say 'I want to do Wis and Int as my primary stats and leave Str and Cha at 10' or something similar to that. As long as you pump your primary stat and choose appropriate powers(e.g. if you are a cha/int warlock do not pick con powers) it's very hard to make a character who just cannot perform in a game that's running at or slightly above level. This is unlike 3e and such, where it was possible to make mistakes at character creation like "Decided not to be a caster" and then find that you're basically a non-factor past maybe L5 when casters get L3 spell access. We stopped playing 3e one night when we rolled up a new group and realized that our party would end up being 2 wizards, 2 druids, and a cleric because nobody was willing to not be a caster.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:33
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Hell, that's exactly what the paladin player in my group did (well CON rather than INT) and even he's pulling his weight, albeit in a six person party with another defender. e: but yeah, whenever I see someone in here say a class is useless I have to remind myself there's a big difference between Assassin/Seeker useless and Truenamer/Rogue/Fighter/not Wizard or Cleric useless. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 19:38 on Oct 11, 2015 |
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Oct 11, 2015 19:36
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Really Pants posted:Expertise feats (+1 per tier to attack rolls) and Improved Defenses (+1 per tier to Fort, Reflex, and Will). Compared to other feats, they have such a major and universal benefit that they basically become mandatory for anyone. And that's lame. And I think another benefit of 4e is that unless you go find one of the really, really good or outright broken builds, optimizing hard won't really break the game either.
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Oct 11, 2015 19:58
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Zereth posted:Don't those exist in the first place because they had a brain fart or something when setting up the math and monster attacks/defenses raise faster than player defenses/attacks, after including level, ability score improvements, and level-appropriate magic items? The concept was that player finesse would improve and more teamwork powers would enhance damage to compensate, but that was very variable by group and high-level fights turned out to be big slogs.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:03
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spectralent posted:The concept was that player finesse would improve and more teamwork powers would enhance damage to compensate, but that was very variable by group and high-level fights turned out to be big slogs. Not, that was the ex post facto justification. They hosed up. IIRC, they adjusted the monster maths late on, but by the time they noticed it was too late to reprint the monsters and too late to reprint the PC tables, so they just chucked the feats in. Their bizarre aversion to even simple system errata thereafter just hosed everything up further. Zereth posted:And I think another benefit of 4e is that unless you go find one of the really, really good or outright broken builds, optimizing hard won't really break the game either. I'd question this. If you play at a low-op table, especially without strikers, and you bring even a moderately optimised Ranger you can easily make everyone else look bad. The brilliant thing for me about 4e though is that optimisation is universal - so if I'm playing with a low-op group, I can still enjoy optimising by picking a weird hybrid or a lovely class and making it passable. Plus, it's relatively easy to throttle back on a high-op character by just ignoring some of your powers and/or abilities.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:13
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My Lovely Horse posted:Hell, that's exactly what the paladin player in my group did (well CON rather than INT) and even he's pulling his weight, albeit in a six person party with another defender. I was going to post about how he's either being carried or you're DMing slow-pitch tabletop, but you could totally do a Versatile Master/Adept Dillettante Twin Strike Half-Elf with those stats and then use the Lyrandar Wind-Rider setup to cheese your way into acceptable damage. That or just take Direct the Strike and use a striker BA every round. However unless he's doing Half-Elf shenanigans, I'm pretty sure he's either being carried or you're lobbing lots of in-fight skill things or "defuse the bomb!" type things at him to account for the fact that he has the offensive punch of a potato.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:56
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IIRC he's someone who's firmly attached to the word Paladin on his sheet (and thereby won't be persuaded to do the sensible thing and play a loving Cleric), but wants to maximise Lay On Hands so he maxed CON and WIS. And My lovely Horse has posted about this particular plight quite a bit previously.
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Oct 11, 2015 20:59
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thespaceinvader posted:Not, that was the ex post facto justification. They hosed up. IIRC, they adjusted the monster maths late on, but by the time they noticed it was too late to reprint the monsters and too late to reprint the PC tables, so they just chucked the feats in. Their bizarre aversion to even simple system errata thereafter just hosed everything up further. Ah; I didn't know that!
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Oct 11, 2015 21:04
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thespaceinvader posted:IIRC he's someone who's firmly attached to the word Paladin on his sheet (and thereby won't be persuaded to do the sensible thing and play a loving Cleric), but wants to maximise Lay On Hands so he maxed CON and WIS. And My lovely Horse has posted about this particular plight quite a bit previously. e: and I thought his thing was having "paladin" on the sheet too, but it turns out it's more that he specifically wants to see if you can effectively play a character with nonstandard score distribution. He also started making notes on how many of his attacks only miss because of his STR 12; I told him it's gonna magically turn out to be 15% but he keeps it up. My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 07:25 on Oct 12, 2015 |
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Oct 12, 2015 06:36
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Yeah, they knew what they had to do to get the math lined up right, they just didn't want to make the additional numbers "baseline" (possibly because it would necessitate making a new Character Advancement chart, as in page 29 of PHB1) so they created feats for them instead and expected you to take them.
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Oct 12, 2015 06:52
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They probably could have introduced "tier level" as a number that gets added to stuff, but instead we got feat taxes.
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Oct 12, 2015 07:19
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Read my lips: No new taxes.
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Oct 12, 2015 07:50
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My Lovely Horse posted:Not too much, I hope. He's just a good example for a lot of things. Give him a lazylord.
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Oct 12, 2015 14:40
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Really Pants posted:Give him a lazylord. Seriously. It's highly doubtful you can theorycraft your way around the fact that the monsters you add will do more damage to the party than you're doing in return, and the healing you're doing is not boosted and is coming out of your own surges. This is not an equation you win. But if he's happy doing it and no-one else cares, fine, whatever.
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Oct 12, 2015 17:24
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But, see, that's why he has 18 CON, so he'll have enough surges to spare!  He somewhat specializes in handing out THP and that genuinely is pretty useful a lot of the time. Of course, the power that would let him grant THP most often is an attack... Warlord was on the table briefly, but in the end he wanted to continue with the paladin, and I don't really have any stakes in it so I just let him do his thing/bide my time until monster damage eclipses his THP.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:09
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My Lovely Horse posted:But, see, that's why he has 18 CON, so he'll have enough surges to spare!  I mean, as I say, if that floats his boat and no-one else minds, and particularly if someone else can pick up the optimiser slack, then it shouldn't be an actual PROBLEM, but it is bafflingly dense.
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Oct 12, 2015 18:28
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That kind of player drives me crazy. "I'm making an intentionally lovely character to see how well I do with it!" The answer is always going to be "lovely" in a game like this because you can't out-skill math.
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Oct 12, 2015 19:14
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My Lovely Horse posted:Not too much, I hope. He's just a good example for a lot of things. The first sentence is the tabletop version of a gimmick run in a video game. Playing around with the rules to see where they bend or break is fun if the game is as robust as 4e. I'm actually a little surprised we don't see more of it. The second sentence though. It's almost admirable the lengths this guy is going to obfuscate the discovery of the manufacturing flaws of his d20s. But then my first 4e character was an elf fighter because I thought having a 16 in Strength, Dexterity, and Wisdom would be super useful, so what do I know?
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Oct 13, 2015 00:29
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wallawallawingwang posted:The first sentence is the tabletop version of a gimmick run in a video game. Playing around with the rules to see where they bend or break is fun if the game is as robust as 4e. I'm actually a little surprised we don't see more of it. Gimmick runs like that can be fun in video games, because videogames are, generally speaking, skill based. If I choose to handicap myself in an FPS, I can account for that by playing better. I can dodge incoming fire, I can shoot more accurately, I can avoid certain encounters, etc. In 4e this really isn't an option. Everything comes down to math and dice. I can't overcome my offensive handicap by getting better at the game and making more headshots. I can't deal with my reduced offense by getting better at my defense and dodging everything. The equivalent to the video game gimmick run isn't "I'm going to play a character who can't hit anything", it's things like "I'm going to do an unusual hybrid" or weird char-op shenanigans to fight a square peg into a round hole and play a Striker Swordmage or something.
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Oct 13, 2015 00:50
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Khizan posted:Gimmick runs like that can be fun in video games, because videogames are, generally speaking, skill based. If I choose to handicap myself in an FPS, I can account for that by playing better. I can dodge incoming fire, I can shoot more accurately, I can avoid certain encounters, etc. I was thinking more like pacifist and ultra low INT runs of fallout, that sort of thing. Situations where you're leaving options off the table with no workarounds. In fallout if you get a random combat encounter, there isn't much you can do except run away, which, depending on the game, isn't player skill based at all. Regardless, its meant to illustrate that other people do similar things not that those things are a perfect and direct 1 to 1 equivalent. Heck, another weakness with the simile would be that most video game gimmick runs are done single player, where an odd ball choice only effects the person making it, unlike table top. The point is merely that what this player is doing isn't completely off the wall, and similar things happen in other games. It's even got precedent in 4e with the lazylord. I appreciate that this guy is willing to experiment, even if his experiment ends in failure. Khizan posted:Everything comes down to math and dice.
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Oct 13, 2015 02:41
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Khizan posted:The equivalent to the video game gimmick run isn't "I'm going to play a character who can't hit anything", it's things like "I'm going to do an unusual hybrid" or weird char-op shenanigans to fight a square peg into a round hole and play a Striker Swordmage or something. This is a really good example. You can make a striker swordmage - you just hybrid it to the right class (assault swordmage / warlock for example). 4e has a decent amount of variance on how you do things, probably roughly equal to 3.x until you get into real obscure shenanigans. And unsurprisingly the answer usually involves hybriding. You just have to know what you're doing. It's totally possible - probably - to make a weird variant fighter who doesn't use strength. I'm pretty sure in fact there's a paragon class specifically that changes the attribute you use; I know of at least one sort of character that gets real good mileage out of it (Battlemind|Fighter). The thing is, you have to actually know what you're doing. It sounds like this player in question has absolutely no idea what they're doing, and would be better off in a non-D&D game without attributes to gently caress them up.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:06
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You can make a lot of theorycraft builds in 4E that rely on either on obtuse reading of the rules or a very specific rules interaction that probably wasn't foreseen. They're usually a bad idea or remain amusing for about one session. The difference is that in 4E these are exceptions; powergamers made these very frequently in 3E because you were either expected by the designers to mine the game for obscure interactions or there was no real QA in the first place. Also, there is certainly skillful and not skillful play in RPGs, particularly 4E. Skillful play is tactically sound decision-making and making the most of your action economy and spendable resources. Name Change fucked around with this message at 03:34 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 03:31
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wallawallawingwang posted:I think there is an interesting conversation that one could have about D&D and player skill. Do you mean the word everything literally or figuratively here? Skill matters in terms of knowing what to do in a given situation, for sure. It's totally possible to char-op the hell out of a character and then make lovely tactical choices with it. What I meant by "everything comes down to math and dice" is that the actual execution of it is down to math and dice. I can practice an FPS and get better at headshots. I can play tons of LoL or Dota and get better at my skillshots. But I can't practice at 4e and get better at landing Price of Cowardice or whatever, because that's completely up to the dice. If my stats suck my accuracy will suck alongside them and that's just how it is. It doesn't matter if I'm the love child of Sun Tzu and Napoleon Bonaparte, if my starting Strength is 10 my miss rate will be ~20% higher than it should be and no amount of skill will change it. I don't consider playing lovely characters to be any kind of 'gimmick run' because there's no amount of skill that can let you overcome that handicap; it's the exact same game except you miss more often and can't do anything about it. ProfessorCirno posted:It's totally possible - probably - to make a weird variant fighter who doesn't use strength. I'm pretty sure in fact there's a paragon class specifically that changes the attribute you use; I know of at least one sort of character that gets real good mileage out of it (Battlemind|Fighter). Daring Blade, Bard PP. The L11 feature lets you use Cha for martial powers, so you just need to pick up an MBA.
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Oct 13, 2015 03:31
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Khizan posted:Daring Blade, Bard PP. The L11 feature lets you use Cha for martial powers, so you just need to pick up an MBA. There's a half elf knight build that just uses con for everything, and adds it to MBA damage 3 times.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:21
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Khizan posted:That kind of player drives me crazy. "I'm making an intentionally lovely character to see how well I do with it!" The answer is always going to be "lovely" in a game like this because you can't out-skill math. I knew a player like this. Played an Elf Seeker with a tremendous amount of "save my own rear end" powers. It was brutal, as the only thing that he could do which was really cool was the level 3 swap the place of two dudes shot (and then daze them if both shots hit). gently caress seekers.
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Oct 13, 2015 04:25
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wallawallawingwang posted:The first sentence is the tabletop version of a gimmick run in a video game. Playing around with the rules to see where they bend or break is fun if the game is as robust as 4e. I'm actually a little surprised we don't see more of it. The second sentence though. It's me, I'm the 
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Oct 13, 2015 07:35
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Khizan posted:Gimmick runs like that can be fun in video games, because videogames are, generally speaking, skill based. If I choose to handicap myself in an FPS, I can account for that by playing better. I can dodge incoming fire, I can shoot more accurately, I can avoid certain encounters, etc. My first 4e character was an eladrin assaultmage because I thought that teleporting around and smacking people with a sword was a cool way to be a defender. The people I had to draw fire away from were a 2hranger, a charbarian, and a frostcheese wizard backed up by a warlord. When people say it is really hard to run into balance issues in 4e I mostly just frown, because assaultmage is garbage for anyone not a genasi until you slap a kit like frostcheese or the white lotus catch-22 on it, and if your party makes a mild attempt at optimization the same way then you're still waaaaay too tough to hit and your marking mechanic is still pathetic. I really should have nuked that character to oblivion but I stuck with it, sadly. I still build assaultmages in my spare time as a way to see how many ways I could have made that character work. GimmickMan fucked around with this message at 12:51 on Oct 13, 2015 |
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Oct 13, 2015 12:47
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Assaultmages are garbage defenders mostly, except swordmages get a wide range of AMAZING defender powers. Assaultmages' basic immediate stinks (because it should have been an II not an IR) but they're not awful, and oyu can make decentish defenders out of them. But that's only from the charopper PoV. In an average table, they'll do fine unless you actively anti-optimise them.
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Oct 13, 2015 18:36
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