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Generic Octopus posted:It's not really a controller-specific issue, though. Strikers that nova something off the board on the first turn and/or have 0.5-1.0 KPR also trivialize the fight. That's still a lot more exciting though!
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Feb 5, 2016 03:14
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Striker Novas also come with a (small) possibility of failure and don't have the capability just shut down an Elite or a solo without spending resources
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Feb 5, 2016 03:33
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I had a GM who designed his own campaign, including every fight, once. In one place, he had the monsters (well, guards in this case) run away when they were losing regardless of taking hits for it. They weren't anything special design wise, but the choice to move away from the normal fight to death surprised us. We weren't set up to prevent that, and so we chased and ended up fighting three encounters worth of monsters back to back to back without rest. We loving won, though, and it was the best drat session I played with that group. e: I'm not saying this tactic will work against slow/prone/whatever control, though, just that by changing nothing but now his monsters played our GM was able to exploit some big weaknesses of our group - lack of good melee basics, control by piling on to-hit penalties, and slow move speeds, when in most fights we just rolled over everyone by piling on the penalties and bursting them down. TheDemon fucked around with this message at 03:48 on Feb 5, 2016 |
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Feb 5, 2016 03:42
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Jolyne Cujoh posted:Striker Novas also come with a (small) possibility of failure and don't have the capability just shut down an Elite or a solo without spending resources Watching that ranger flub (like natural 1-2) Twin Strike consistently an entire encounter was pretty painful. Their party went through a lot of a healing surges because the striker just couldn't put down the enemies fast enough. Plus I know the frustration of being that player who just has the off night with bad rolls, which can be surprisingly often with a system as swingy as D&D. But I usually prepare for the worst when it comes from my party because when they're not just completely fumbling rolls, they're a force to be reckoned with. It's also nice that I have players in the group who want to be a little more creative and perhaps less violent solutions to problems. You know, like talking to the tree people before just burning down their forest because the Invoker probably could just set the whole forest on fire.
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Feb 5, 2016 04:08
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Generic Octopus posted:It's not really a controller-specific issue, though. Strikers that nova something off the board on the first turn and/or have 0.5-1.0 KPR also trivialize the fight. In the low-to-mid levels striker novas are rarely the AOE clusterfuckbombs that controllers are, though. They're also easier to handle from the DM chair. Bloodied reactions, heals, counterattacks, immediates, etc. All that kind of stuff can help mitigate a striker nova and all that stuff just feels a lot cleaner. When you explicitly put a cap on accuracy penalties or give them things like status effect mitigation tools it comes off as you're actively adding tools to gently caress with the controller specifically, but since everybody does damage and everybody hits, tools to mitigate that have a much more neutral feel to them. "Target cannot be dazed" is directly loving with the wizard, but an immediate to shift 3 squares and throw a knife when they're attacked doesn't feel like you're directly loving with the striker, even though it will get them out of the standard/minor/minor chain effectively enough, because that kind of power can be used against everybody who hits in melee.
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Feb 5, 2016 07:49
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You can also put a controller chassis on almost every class by taking the right options and/or working together to get the wombo-combos that will basically just keep a monster prone inside of a zone it effectively can't stand up in, deciding the entire fight then and there. Nerf rogue can inflict -6 to hit by about level 2 if I recall, with -8 coming in at level 11. Even though this rogue is effective, it also interminably lengthens combat as you are taking away sneak attack dice. One player having an awful night where his character contributes little or nothing also happens fairly often in heroic-tier 4E. The game really made it too difficult to hit things, frankly, with very little gray area, and most builds just don't do anything if you're not hitting.
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Feb 5, 2016 13:29
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Idk, if a player is having a bad night, I'll give him inspiration dice a lot. Let him roleplay doing awesome things for advantage, that kind of thing. Make up for the suck by being flashy.
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Feb 5, 2016 14:13
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Like when all is said and done, Leaders are cool because they make the whole team feel extra awesome, Strikers are cool because doing a ton of damage is always rad, Defenders CAN be cool when they're defending by leaping in front of the monster who's trying to attack you and pounding it so hard with a hammer they go flying back 50 feet and can barely understand it has hands in the next round, and Controllers...Controllers are there to make everything less cool. They make the fight less dramatic. So gently caress Controllers.
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Feb 6, 2016 11:05
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In praise of defenders, there was a dramatic boss fight we were having on like the third game of 4e I ever ran and the Ranger hadn't realised that he had the durability of a wet paper towel. The Orc Warboss swung down his hammer to kill the ranger, who happened to be standing next to the Fighter who proceeded to smash the Orc's head into a greasy smear on the wall, saving his life. Awesome times. Also in a later game I played in my Paladin samurai had the basic strategy of "mark everyone in the room, be untouchable, have temp HP out the wazoo" so that was fun. I have bad experiences with controllers, though not the same ones you guys have. In my experience controllers have only ever been played by the person who only starts thinking about her move on her turn, spends five minutes considering options, then just uses magic missile again.
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Feb 6, 2016 16:10
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If the DM sets things up to account for the presence of one or more controllers, the game turns out better. No other role needs this kind of consideration, though.
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Feb 6, 2016 16:51
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Idk, I've had more games go sour because strikers cleaned the board up turn one consistently than I've had problems with controllers.
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Feb 6, 2016 17:16
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I've been considering trying my hand at starting up a new 4E campaign here on SA, but wanted to gauge some interest in the premise first. The gist is that I'll be converting over the Elder Evils book from 3.5 and using... All of them, at once. The world is ending ten times over, hop to it heroes. Their world-level effects will all be overlapping, which will lead to some interesting interactions in regards to things like Ragnorra and Atropus. Would anyone be interested in this? It wouldn't start off with all the Elder Evils in full swing and they wouldn't all become active at the exact same time, of course. The game would ramp up to the point where it hits mega-apocalypse.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:38
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I'd be interested.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:39
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PBP or Roll20?
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Feb 6, 2016 19:44
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The Crotch posted:PBP or Roll20? Not sure yet, leaning towards Roll20 though.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:48
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Mark me down as curious, then.
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Feb 6, 2016 19:57
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The big problem with controllers is that defenders fill pretty much the same kind of role, but they do it in a way that's much more interesting and engaging than "shits out AOE disables"
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Feb 6, 2016 20:20
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I will do a thing, send me a PM when you're ready I guess (or a link to thread).
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Feb 6, 2016 20:23
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As much fun as I'm having running 4e, playing it is one of my favorite things to do, so totally interested.
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Feb 6, 2016 21:03
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Roll20 is half the reason me and my pals got back to playing semi regularly again. Also, you don't have to use it's wacky macro sheets you can just use the dice roller while working off a paper or text/PDF sheet. I admit, me and my pals trust eachother to not gently caress around or metagame too hard, so we've all got GM tags to speed up the combat process, so we can adjust the HP or position of enemies (and know if we hit them or not) during our turns. It's not a style for everyone, I admit. But the option is there if you decide you've gotten tired of tracking everything yourself (And if you can trust your players not to abuse being able to read the monster stats  )
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Feb 6, 2016 23:41
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In one of my game shop games I ran, we had a guy come in with 10 DEX, 10 STR, like 12 CON and had hosed up his Psion build. He didn't really want to re-roll because he felt like he would be getting special treatment, so I figured I'd play on his high af Wisdom and Intelligence rolls. What I did was, I let him roll 1x per round, to learn the AC, Bloodied Value, and 1 attack of a target creature. (Major Failures were him nothing, failure by 10 got 1 fact, failures by 5 got 2 facts etc.) Group loved it, the Metagamers got real chummy with him. The guy got be a bamf via science / mind control, and no-one felt gimped by the Controller who couldn't Control. e: I would love to run a roll20 game for Goons, but I've had real bad problems on other sites with people not showing up after 2 -> 3 games. Though I do mostly plan for Campaigns, (unless other wise stated,) to be done by game 8.
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Feb 6, 2016 23:58
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Obligatum VII posted:Not sure yet, leaning towards Roll20 though. In that case, I'd be interested myself. Funnily enough on all this controller talk, the player I was referring to before is actually our Defender, they're some essentials class (Knight maybe?) and Revenant with some theme I'm not sure about, but what it comes down to is that they apparently can spam the slow effect, so when that happens and the boss gets surrounded they're basically trapped and moved around as we wish with my flurry of blows slide. I also don't think Minions particularly help much with our party distribution, as a monk with all my AOE and flurry of blows, they tend to get wiped out in one or two rounds. Cirina fucked around with this message at 03:09 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 03:03
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Eopia posted:In that case, I'd be interested myself. That's all they need to last. They're really just to distract you from the bigger threats, like the elites or solos or even higher level standard brutes/soldiers. Plus some minions have nasty effects like being able to survive more than one hit or make free attacks upon death.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:13
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Mecha Gojira posted:That's all they need to last. They're really just to distract you from the bigger threats, like the elites or solos or even higher level standard brutes/soldiers. Plus some minions have nasty effects like being able to survive more than one hit or make free attacks upon death. Yeah, that free attack on death thing took us by surprise a couple combats ago, minions rushed to surround us on round one and when I responded by aoeing all of them at once, they all exploded. Took our wizard down to 3 hp from full and hurt the rest of us rather badly.
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Feb 7, 2016 03:18
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give some of your your boss type monsters reactions to being proned or slowed or somthing, change up the strategy required to fight them a bit
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Feb 7, 2016 03:30
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Auto-saves at end of turn and multiple initiatives goes a long way towards making sure the dazing/dominating effects don't completely shut down your encounter's centerpiece. Most dragons are all about that, especially ones with multiple heads. Have your DM make you fight dragons more. It's Dungeons and Dragons after all.
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Feb 7, 2016 04:00
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Even though first session was meeting in a tavern (meeting by accident so its alright, we all had reasons to be there), it was a success and I can confirm that Bards are cool. This is the first character I've played that has an outgoing personality or isnt an auxiliary type character. Feels good. Btw have sound clips for bard attacks went over really well. Especially since I was pretty much just using shouts.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:04
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I faked my opening with starting outside of a tavern, and then throwing zombies on the board and making them roll initiative. Then from there they were hurried along to a graveyard and never made it back. Now three sessions later they're miles away at a fort on the edge of the wilderness.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:12
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Mecha Gojira posted:I faked my opening with starting outside of a tavern, and then throwing zombies on the board and making them roll initiative. Then from there they were hurried along to a graveyard and never made it back. Now three sessions later they're miles away at a fort on the edge of the wilderness. Yeah tavern can work. He knew we'd cause trouble. Taken to prison after 1st session. It gave us a nice meet n greet and i know he wanted to do a prison break anyway. Its great when a new guy totally embraces it too. Best character is the guy no one expected it from.
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Feb 7, 2016 05:25
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Turtlicious posted:In one of my game shop games I ran, we had a guy come in with 10 DEX, 10 STR, like 12 CON and had hosed up his Psion build. He didn't really want to re-roll because he felt like he would be getting special treatment, so I figured I'd play on his high af Wisdom and Intelligence rolls. It's good that you allowed this guy to find his niche, but uh aren't Psions Int and Wis/Cha focussed? Blank Construct fucked around with this message at 12:21 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 11:44
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Yeah, having high WIS/INT is (the start of) a good Psion... Unless you mean 'Monk' or 'Battlemind' as psionic power source classes rather than Psion the class. Also, what you did sounds like... knowledge checks. Which I'd expect most parties to be doing anyway.
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Feb 7, 2016 12:03
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Blank Construct posted:It's good that you allowed this guy to find his niche, but uh aren't Psions Int and Wis/Cha focussed? Battlemind with Psion power source. Not the psion class. thespaceinvader posted:Yeah, having high WIS/INT is (the start of) a good Psion... Unless you mean 'Monk' or 'Battlemind' as psionic power source classes rather than Psion the class. I didn't realize Knowledge Checks worked liked that, I'm probably a terrible DM. (I'm also the only one willing to DM.) My group never ever does knowledge checks. e: I'm probably going to encourage it more now. Any thoughts on some quick conversion of these 5e Mass Battle rules -> 4e? http://media.wizards.com/2015/downloads/dnd/UA_Battlesystem.pdf Turtlicious fucked around with this message at 20:44 on Feb 7, 2016 |
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Feb 7, 2016 20:34
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My group also never does knowledge checks, but I'll readily tell them any and all numeric values they want to know, whether a monster power is at-will or encounter or whatever. Not at the outset, no one's gonna keep that in mind, but mid-battle depending on the situation I'll tell them stuff like "well that one has 23 AC vs. the other's 21" or "that one has a lower Reflex but the other one has only 6 HP left". My reasoning being, it has no influence on their rolls, and someone would make the knowledge check anyway.
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Feb 7, 2016 20:42
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I generally tell my players what a monster's defenses are once they manage to hit them, give them a general idea of how much HP they have (beyond them just being able to see the bars because it's Roll20), and they have a good enough sense about abilities to tell when they're at will or encounter (plus I roll for recharges openly). We're also in Paragon where everyone generally has something to do with their minor and couldn't afford the action to use a knowledge check, but I think that by the time they're in paragon they're such experienced combatants that they should be able to tell these things through the act of fighting anyway.
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Feb 7, 2016 20:46
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Turtlicious posted:Any thoughts on some quick conversion of these 5e Mass Battle rules -> 4e? Or an alternative set? They're leading 200+ soldiers, with another regiment of 100, in a fortified city against like 500 -> 600 dwarves, so it's going to get massive.
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Feb 7, 2016 20:51
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Turtlicious posted:Battlemind with Psion power source. Not the psion class. Knowledge checks by RAW get you name type and keywords on a medium DC and resistances and immunities and attacks on a hard DC, but as a DM I'd not hesitate to say an AC number or whatever if asked. Hiding the numbers is meaningless. And yeah, it's super confusing to say Psion when you mean Battlemind. I'd just have a chat with him out of game and ask if he wants to either change his class or change his stats. His current character is going to be very unfun forever if he does neither; getting knowledge checks will get old fast as the game gets to higher levels.
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Feb 7, 2016 20:55
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My usual take on mass battles is that while the battle is going on, the party does big hero stuff that ultimately determines the outcome of the battle and key pathways ("has Lord Butt survived the battle y/n"). No need for complicated rules or actually running the battle, but a battlefield with two armies on it is, of course, all kinds of special terrain. Ideally it works like the combat in Brütal Legend - two forces fight each other and you're in the thick of it opening pathways, helping out, and taking down the enemy siege weapons that would otherwise take out a whole wing of your army. e: I do realize using the Brütal Legend combat as a positive example is somewhat of an unorthodox move
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Feb 7, 2016 21:01
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Turtlicious posted:Battlemind with Psion power source. Not the psion class. Psion is a class. Psionic is a power source.
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Feb 7, 2016 21:27
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My Lovely Horse posted:My usual take on mass battles is that while the battle is going on, the party does big hero stuff that ultimately determines the outcome of the battle and key pathways ("has Lord Butt survived the battle y/n"). No need for complicated rules or actually running the battle, but a battlefield with two armies on it is, of course, all kinds of special terrain. Ideally it works like the combat in Brütal Legend - two forces fight each other and you're in the thick of it opening pathways, helping out, and taking down the enemy siege weapons that would otherwise take out a whole wing of your army. I would love to see a write up of Massive Battles that was something like a goal oriented Lair Assault. Break the Battle Ground down into a couple of different Segments with Events. Each time you participate in an Event the battle advances one step, moving between segments grants your party a Short Rest and advances the battle one step. Completing Events changes the course of the battle. Basically the system that newer Dynasty Warriors use but semi turn based. Just give each Army Unit a Strength and Power, then give each side a Morale score. When two Units meet you compare each's Strength+Power+Morale, lower side loses Strength. When a side runs out of Strength it's defeated. Going around the battlefield completing events modifies Morale and some other stuff, or maybe changes the routes Units take. I dunno maybe I should just write something up, I'm starting to see how this would work in my head.
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Feb 7, 2016 21:30
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Every time I've run 4e mass battles, we just made a custom monster stat block for each unit led by a PC/named NPC, and otherwise had each unit represented as a monster. It worked great.
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Feb 7, 2016 22:06
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