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Unknown Quantity posted:So having looked at controller nonsense enough I'm pretty solidly set on Wizard now. Or Enchanter Mage, more specifically. Aside from the obvious potential issue of running into something with a high Will defense, there's nothing all that wrong with mostly taking the non-damaging hindrance powers, yeah? IE Hypnotism, Illusory Obstacles, Maze of Mirrors, Sleep, etc. The job of a well-built Wizard is to make the DM want to throttle you basically all day every day because his mobs do nothing of any use or import except maybe hit themselves over the head a few times. OneThousandMonkeys posted:Somehow a shitload of damage combined with potentially massive mobility is never really boring to me. This, basically. I always found with Slayers and Knights that I liked the fact that they just did the same thing virtually all the time, because it let me play the tactical positioning game that 4e did pretty well compared to any other system I've tried. I find it a lot more interesting to play a tactics and strategy game than a 'pick power, does it work' game. It's why I really dislike 5e, because the combat fundamentally feels to me like it boils down to 'cast spell y/n'.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:30
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Somehow a shitload of damage combined with potentially massive mobility is never really boring to me. It works on stuff like Executioner|Warlock because they DO have non-charge options, they're just mostly interrupts or cool ways to move around and such. On a Slayer, you don't really have potentially massive mobility. You just get to draw a straight line every turn, and that's about it. The Executionlock gets cross counters, off-turn dominates, easy teleports, and poo poo, A Mirror Darkly just on it's own is amazing. Depending on your GM you also get the singular good Assassin power (or I guess both powers if you really wanna go wild about it) if you go Dex/Cha, and probably their best PP lets you hand out basic attacks without stopping the CHARGE TRAIN. And you gain full concealment every time you charge so you're just this loving bullet train shadow motherfucker who vanishes into the darkness then re-appears with someone stuck on the end of your rapier. Like, yeah, you're gonna charge just about every turn, but there's more to it then just drawing a straight line. Likewise to damage, charge isn't going to beat multiple attack abuse (but, well, good. Most multiple attack based cheese is just that - abuse and cheese). To go back to the hybrid, you aren't just doing great damage by combining striker abilities, you're also doing interrupt dominates and passing out basic attacks every time your cursed target is bloodied or killed. e-classes aren't awesome with a charge build, they're functional - because they're not entirely functional straight out of the box, because by then the dev team had purged most of the actual 4e writers.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:30
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A damage oriented wizard is a Sorcerer.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:31
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ProfessorCirno posted:It works on stuff like Executioner|Warlock because they DO have non-charge options, they're just mostly interrupts or cool ways to move around and such. On a Slayer, you don't really have potentially massive mobility. You just get to draw a straight line every turn, and that's about it. The Executionlock gets cross counters, off-turn dominates, easy teleports, and poo poo, A Mirror Darkly just on it's own is amazing. Depending on your GM you also get the singular good Assassin power (or I guess both powers if you really wanna go wild about it) if you go Dex/Cha, and probably their best PP lets you hand out basic attacks without stopping the CHARGE TRAIN. And you gain full concealment every time you charge so you're just this loving bullet train shadow motherfucker who vanishes into the darkness then re-appears with someone stuck on the end of your rapier. Like, yeah, you're gonna charge just about every turn, but there's more to it then just drawing a straight line. You certainly can get solid mobility on a Slayer, they have a wide range of ways to access multi-square shifts and jumps. It's one reason I like playing the Thri Kreen variant. Plus they do get a couple of encounter powers to spice things up and to abuse multi-attacks if you need to just hack this guy down right now. Exe|Locks are good too, though.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:34
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Probably my favorite character I've played in 4E is a bugbear rogue with a bastard sword (d12 damage instead of d4!) who combines a charge kit with Great Leap to NBA Jam on monsters.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:36
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Unknown Quantity posted:So having looked at controller nonsense enough I'm pretty solidly set on Wizard now. Or Enchanter Mage, more specifically. Aside from the obvious potential issue of running into something with a high Will defense, there's nothing all that wrong with mostly taking the non-damaging hindrance powers, yeah? IE Hypnotism, Illusory Obstacles, Maze of Mirrors, Sleep, etc. Essentials added lots of wizard powers, especially enchantment powers, that don't need to hit. So there's that.
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Dec 6, 2015 13:37
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I thought the Knight's Defender Aura was really cool, and then I read the rest of the class and it does just about nothing else. Is there any shenanigans you could to have Defender Aura regardless?
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Dec 6, 2015 14:10
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gradenko_2000 posted:I thought the Knight's Defender Aura was really cool, and then I read the rest of the class and it does just about nothing else. Is there any shenanigans you could to have Defender Aura regardless? Berserker gets I think the same thing and has at least a few powers that futz with it, EG a daily that makes it a 2 square aura and lets you shift a square to hit someone who breaks the mark, but beyond that not that I'm aware of.
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Dec 6, 2015 14:15
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:I think the idea is you do 1 summon per encounter rather than summon-spam. Yeah, but at that rate you cover about half the encouters / extended rest. Hence, part-time. And for the first part of heroic you're totally screwed.
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Dec 6, 2015 14:30
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gradenko_2000 posted:I thought the Knight's Defender Aura was really cool, and then I read the rest of the class and it does just about nothing else. Is there any shenanigans you could to have Defender Aura regardless? The only way to get it outside being a Knight, Berserker or Cavalier is to multiclass or hybrid cavalier, but the former gets you only the aura without the punishment and the latter gets you lol. Having said that, it would drop pretty harmlessly into a Weaponmaster Fighter in replacement on his marking mechanic and the OA bonus options and let you play an aura defender without playing one of those three. Part of me wishes that it had been in place from the start, because for most defenders, I like it more than a marking mechanic, which always did feel a little odd to me on some situations with the Fighter - so, he's 50 feet away and Stunned, but for some reason he's still causing me to take a penalty? As opposed to the aura which in that situation you could just step out of. ArkInBlack posted:Berserker gets I think the same thing and has at least a few powers that futz with it, EG a daily that makes it a 2 square aura and lets you shift a square to hit someone who breaks the mark, but beyond that not that I'm aware of. It gets that and a couple of powers that make targets in the aura grant CA and later CA + somethign else I can't recall offhand. I really like Berserkers. I know I'm a minority in that, but you stick a Helm of Able Defence and a Cloak of Displacement on him, and the lower Will defence becomes less important, more so when you get Dreadnought and Sup Will at Paragon. Agile Recovery deals well with the prone not next to anyone issue, and they can pick up a bunch of other re-engagement powers. Spiked Chain Prof + Flail Expertise + Lashing Flail+Dragging Flail makes the punishment scary, and they're still doing modest amounts of damage with plenty of resist all most of the time.
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Dec 6, 2015 14:35
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Unknown Quantity posted:So having looked at controller nonsense enough I'm pretty solidly set on Wizard now. Or Enchanter Mage, more specifically. Aside from the obvious potential issue of running into something with a high Will defense, there's nothing all that wrong with mostly taking the non-damaging hindrance powers, yeah? IE Hypnotism, Illusory Obstacles, Maze of Mirrors, Sleep, etc. I'm an enchanter/illusionist and it's great fun. High will monsters are pretty rare too in my experience. You're right that you shouldn't be looking for powers that do damage, but for powers that'll piss your DM off. If you can get your DM to yell something like "But that's such bullshit", you know you've build a good character. Plus, there's powers like phantom foes that don't require an attack roll but purely depend on saving throws. Those get around high-will enemies.
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Dec 6, 2015 14:36
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Personally I hate controllers like that as a player because they tend to trivialize the game and turn the fights into sessions on the punching bag. I get 3.5 flashbacks when our daring midnight assault on the bandit camp turns into the wizard casting a spell and saying "Well, kill them already, this won't hold them down all day".
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Dec 6, 2015 17:57
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That's basically the reason everyone hates Demoralize. It doesn't actually CC them, but it does make their actions worthless for one round.
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Dec 6, 2015 18:43
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Which leads to the issue of almost all non-blasting wizard powers being...well, horrifically good at controlling! Which means you're either playing the build and making enemies without even trying, or not doing it and doing a job the wizard really isn't supposed to be doing.
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Dec 6, 2015 20:53
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Khizan posted:Personally I hate controllers like that as a player because they tend to trivialize the game and turn the fights into sessions on the punching bag. I get 3.5 flashbacks when our daring midnight assault on the bandit camp turns into the wizard casting a spell and saying "Well, kill them already, this won't hold them down all day". Agreed. My wizard took a bunch of those sort of powers (so did one of the other players with a cleric). After a couple of sessions we agreed with our DM to retrain them as they made the combat too boring - either by trivializing it or making half the opponents irrelivent . On paper locking down a monster or two or making them suck with permanent defence or attack penalties might seem good but it can make things tedious.
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Dec 6, 2015 21:05
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I found 4e to be really hit-and-miss as a DM. Like, I appreciate that the mathematical framework operates the way it does, so that you can fairly easily upscale or downgrade monsters to whatever level you need, but goddamn is it hard to challenge parties without shoehorning some gimmick into the encounter, or flatout over-leveling a monster just so they can survive long enough to do that One Weird Trick that they have. I mean, yeah, "be a fan of the players" and whatnot, but that can also have the effect of making the DM feel like a clown. e; It'd be one thing if monsters were at least simple to run, but generally in order for them to be competent they also have to be complicated or at least involve synergistic combos, which all too often never see the light of day. P.d0t fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Dec 6, 2015 |
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Dec 6, 2015 22:11
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As a DM in 4e you really, REALLY have to assume your mobs aren't going to do much of any use. If you can't handle that, this is not the system for you.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:20
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thespaceinvader posted:As a DM in 4e you really, REALLY have to assume your mobs aren't going to do much of any use. If you can't handle that, this is not the system for you. I mean, I can "handle" that, it's just loving boring. It's also why I ended up crutching hard on 2-hit minions because they're low effort.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:31
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Khizan posted:Personally I hate controllers like that as a player because they tend to trivialize the game and turn the fights into sessions on the punching bag. I get 3.5 flashbacks when our daring midnight assault on the bandit camp turns into the wizard casting a spell and saying "Well, kill them already, this won't hold them down all day". As I've said a few times, "the controller's job is to make things boring." Which isn't to say controllers are bad. Enchanter wizards can have plenty of fun turning baddies against each other and turning them into puppets and such - it's just that most enchantment spells at a certain point end up being save or suck, and you can destroy their ability to save, and psions have a neigh uncounterable "nope, you do nothing your turn" that they can spam, and Invokers just shrug and go "every enemy is stunned and can't do poo poo for a round" every encounter, and so on. I think one of the issues is the nova; when you're all bruised and bleeding and it looks like the fight is going to go wrong, and suddenly the tide is turned (be it because the controller threw down a spell that stunned EVERYONE, or the leader sets off a magnificent chain of effects, or what have you), that's pretty exciting. It's a lot less exciting when that's Plan A for the start of everything, and there's nothing to really stop that.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:37
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ProfessorCirno posted:It's a lot less exciting when that's Plan A for the start of everything, and there's nothing to really stop that. I thought the point behind Creatures with Auras were to help with that, So it gives creatures +4 to will or some poo poo, as a direct counter. This makes the Leaders a target they have to kill first, which then open to tactical gameplay on how to geek their dudes protection before they are about to murder you. Basically, if an Invoker is stunning every turn, figure out how they're doing it, then slap a few aura enchantments on some brutes.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:39
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I mean the nova issue isn't just one with controllers. Leader novas supercharge the party to murder everything with ease on turn one, striker novas will target your biggest baddy and kill it immediately (and probably a bunch of other baddies with it), controller novas can more or less end actual opposition, and defender novas...I don't think defenders actually have the same ability to nova, so good on you, defenders.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:43
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How is this happening to you guys? My parties all seem to get to death's door in about 2-3 sequential encounters. How do you guys end up with ineffective mobs?bam I the outlier?
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Dec 6, 2015 22:47
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ProfessorCirno posted:I mean the nova issue isn't just one with controllers. Leader novas supercharge the party to murder everything with ease on turn one, striker novas will target your biggest baddy and kill it immediately (and probably a bunch of other baddies with it), controller novas can more or less end actual opposition, and defender novas...I don't think defenders actually have the same ability to nova, so good on you, defenders.
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Dec 6, 2015 22:58
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My giant crocodile man Slayer's first action in combat was splattering an enemy from full to dead on the pavement.
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Dec 6, 2015 23:06
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Moriatti posted:How is this happening to you guys? My parties all seem to get to death's door in about 2-3 sequential encounters. How do you guys end up with ineffective mobs?bam I the outlier? No, I think these guys just optimise really hard. I DMed all the way to 30 with a party who didn't really do much optimisation and the game ran well and monsters got to do stuff. But if you've got players who read a lot of online guides and make characters with race/class/equipment synergies I could see stuff getting nuts. This could result in varying degrees of fun - I wouldn't have much issue DMing for a party with insane damage output (just send more monsters in waves, up the HP on existing ones, and so on) but it wouldn't be much fun if my monsters were just completely ineffective. I'm a player as well as a GM, after all, and debuffs aren't much fun if they prevent a player from affecting the game. Gort fucked around with this message at 00:05 on Dec 7, 2015 |
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Dec 7, 2015 00:02
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P.d0t posted:I mean, I can "handle" that, it's just loving boring. It's also why I ended up crutching hard on 2-hit minions because they're low effort. For my money PC initiative-op is what makes DMing in 4e boring. If every PC goes before every mob, there's very little for the DM to do in most fights, but if they're a bit more interleaved, there's more interest.
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Dec 7, 2015 00:13
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Gort posted:No, I think these guys just optimise really hard. I DMed all the way to 30 with a party who didn't really do much optimisation and the game ran well and monsters got to do stuff. This explains it to me. That is the one thing I lament about D&D being such a combat simulator, is its a lot harder to give a clever party an invincible for and then just say "deal with it" while having the result be exciting. I suppose you can still do puzzle bosses, but yeah.
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Dec 7, 2015 00:39
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I got a Badge of the Berserker first session 
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Dec 7, 2015 01:30
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P.d0t posted:I found 4e to be really hit-and-miss as a DM. Like, I appreciate that the mathematical framework operates the way it does, so that you can fairly easily upscale or downgrade monsters to whatever level you need, but goddamn is it hard to challenge parties without shoehorning some gimmick into the encounter, or flatout over-leveling a monster just so they can survive long enough to do that One Weird Trick that they have. Quite a few words have been written about how monster damage is too low and does not keep up.
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Dec 7, 2015 01:44
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One approach, for cases where the party is up against some larger organization, could be to have the enemies actually retreat, and if one of them gets away to tell the others of that tactic you seem to be using over and over again... Well, they'll adapt their own tactics to at least ablate it. Make it so that a given strategy may work a few times, but unless they manage to never leave witnesses, eventually it stops working so well. Doesn't apply if all their enemies are non-sapient or one-offs though.
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Dec 7, 2015 02:39
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Unknown Quantity posted:So having looked at controller nonsense enough I'm pretty solidly set on Wizard now. Or Enchanter Mage, more specifically. Aside from the obvious potential issue of running into something with a high Will defense, there's nothing all that wrong with mostly taking the non-damaging hindrance powers, yeah? IE Hypnotism, Illusory Obstacles, Maze of Mirrors, Sleep, etc. That's the point of wizard, yes. If you really want to, put damaging spells in your spellbook and juggle in a Mnemonic Implement when your strikers aren't doing a good job. But really, it's next to impossible to gently caress up a wizard build. I played an extremely un-optimal (but well-optimized, if that makes sense) Hobgoblin wizard once, who at level 4 and on specialized in Thunderwave + Polearm Momentum and shoving people into his daily/encounter zones or off the GM's lovely walkways and cliffs. Even that kind of silly control worked really well in heroic.
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Dec 7, 2015 03:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:Quite a few words have been written about how monster damage is too low and does not keep up. Damage isn't even the problem, it's more that defense is too low, IME. Like, i started using Soldier-level MM3 math for AC on all my mobs just for it to be more "even." There was a bit of  from the players, due to missing more often, but overall the encounters were a better challenge.
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Dec 7, 2015 06:56
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Gort posted:No, I think these guys just optimise really hard.
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Dec 7, 2015 07:08
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What races do you guys like? I've been going through the setting books and player handbooks for campaign inspiration, and I really like Shardminds because they've got pretty neat character concepts.
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Dec 7, 2015 07:42
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Dragonborn are pretty cool. Ignore the broken as hell subraces.
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Dec 7, 2015 07:47
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berenzen posted:Dragonborn are pretty cool. Ignore the broken as hell subraces. This threshold for 'broken' seems kinda low.
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Dec 7, 2015 07:59
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Yo goblinoids are rad as hell.
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Dec 7, 2015 08:05
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Generic Octopus posted:This threshold for 'broken' seems kinda low. It is, but the threshold for broken is low in 4e in general compared with other editions. When balance SunAndSpring posted:What races do you guys like? I've been going through the setting books and player handbooks for campaign inspiration, and I really like Shardminds because they've got pretty neat character concepts. None of them are outright terrible, though some of the MM races are a bit wonky, and obviously there are some that have MUCH more support, and therefore options, than others. For instance, if someone wanted to play a Shardmind, I'd probably let him count as an Eladrin for basically all purposes, because virtually all the Eladrin feats would fit nicely into Shardmind flavour, and Eladrin are just... better.
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Dec 7, 2015 09:35
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What's a Rebreather?
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Dec 7, 2015 09:40
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Zereth posted:What's a Rebreather? Pick a Dragonborn Sorcerer with the Sensate background, pick up the Ancient Soul and Numsemnee's atonement feats The Ancient Soul feat allows you to recharge your Dragon breath power if you take damage of the same type as your dragon breath (provided your dragon soul matches) The Nusemnee's Atonement feat triggers if you damage an ally with an attack. The damage is redirected to yourself, and you resist 5 damage. Usually, enough damage can get through. The Senaste character theme provides temporary hitpoints whenever you use an encounter power. These temporary hitpoints are removed first, while still considering yourself damaged by your own attack. And the core of the build: Dragon Breath. It is a minor action, and as written, can be used three times in a single round if desired.
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Dec 7, 2015 09:53
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