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Zandar posted:They could have just killed off every single bladesinger, like they did the assassins going into 2E. No need to cater for the archetype then! What's the story behind this?
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Aug 27, 2016 18:36
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Blank Construct posted:What's the story behind this? Remember how the Spellplague was the bullshit in-setting reason for the rules changes between 3.x and 4E? The Time of Troubles was that for the change between AD&D and AD&D2. Assassin got removed from the PHB so FR writers decided that Bhaal died and all assassin PCs and NPCs spontaneously exploded. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 21:30 on Aug 27, 2016 |
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Aug 27, 2016 19:04
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Ah, I see. Thanks!
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Aug 27, 2016 19:08
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It lead to some real great moments of hilarity, such as "No see this one super popular NPC doesn't die because he's not an Assassin, he's just someone who kills other people for money!"
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Aug 27, 2016 21:04
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Artemis Entrei!!!! 
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Aug 28, 2016 02:39
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That's kind of the pitfall of ocupation as class. The idea that NPCs need to interact with the world the same way players do. On another note: I was talking with a friend about bladesingers, and we decided that probably the best thing they could have done, given the design space they had (I.E. it can't be a paragon path or a theme, and it has to fit into the essentials framework) would've been to make it a Mage School.
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Aug 28, 2016 03:01
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Kurieg posted:That's kind of the pitfall of ocupation as class. The idea that NPCs need to interact with the world the same way players do.
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Aug 28, 2016 04:22
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Chernobyl Peace Prize posted:Bladesinger as the Essentials Swordmage would be kinda interesting. Wider-area defender aura, basic attacks with some reach / shifting, then give them some actual dailies maybe. Pretty much that. You could have made a pretty decent Essentials Swordmage, but they didn't because it Had To Be A Wizard because Mearls is bereft of creativity and hated the edition he was working on.
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Aug 28, 2016 09:47
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I don't understand why they just didn't given them wizard dallies as dallies
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Aug 28, 2016 10:21
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Cthulhu Dreams posted:I don't understand why they just didn't given them wizard dallies as dallies The Bladesinger, aka the Fighter/Wizard of days past, had less powerful spellcasting than Wizards because of their martial focus. Dailies are the Wizard's strongest ability. Therefore... 
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Aug 29, 2016 00:43
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For content: I actually got a group withdraw from a fight the other day. They were Vampire Monks with an unarmed attack that hit for 2d8+15 damage, but they had a Flurry of Blows that let them make these attacks thrice. They managed to drop the group's level 9 Warlord to unconsciousness within a single round after all three attacks hit, so the Wizard dazed them on his turn, then the Fighter made an executive decision to run in, grab the Warlord, and run out. There was then a lot of bickering over whether they should totally come back and give them what-for. Cthulhu Dreams posted:I don't understand why they just didn't given them wizard dallies as dallies Has anyone ever told you that your avatar is extremely distracting from whatever point you might be wanting to make? And not in a good way.
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Aug 29, 2016 01:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:For content: I actually got a group withdraw from a fight the other day. They were Vampire Monks with an unarmed attack that hit for 2d8+15 damage, but they had a Flurry of Blows that let them make these attacks thrice. They managed to drop the group's level 9 Warlord to unconsciousness within a single round after all three attacks hit, so the Wizard dazed them on his turn, then the Fighter made an executive decision to run in, grab the Warlord, and run out. Yeah, this is what I get for posting in Auspol. I need to buy a new avatar.
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Aug 29, 2016 02:53
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For the purposes of retrocloning/hacking and mining ideas, are there any sort of unifying mechanics that Controllers all share? Or is the role just a mixed bag of status effects, zones, and minion clearance? Likewise, are there any Defender mechanics that do a particularly good/bad job of fulfilling their role? I always hear the Paladin one get poo poo on for only doing damage, and not enough of it.
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Aug 31, 2016 05:00
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Nope, controllers don't have any real unified mechanic like leaders (and defenders and strikers) do, this has been a point of discussion before. Paladins as they level climb up there with fighters as the strongest defenders in the game, and may even exceed fighters at epic, but you're right in that Divine Challenge is kind of crummy at the start and core-only paladins are the worst defenders in the game because they lack the ability to engage multiple targets and their damage sucks. Divine Power introduces a bunch of powers that throw down Divine Sanctions, which are like Divine Challenge except they tend to last for a shorter period of time. It also introduced several immediate interrupt powers into the game, allowing paladins to stack up their punishment. While Divine Challenge/Sanction don't do that much in the way of damage, they don't take any actions either, so you can use an immediate interrupt to use something like Price of Cowardice or Demand Respect and add on even more damage if your mark gets violated. As you level you can pick up more things that stack with your mark, such as Bitter Challenge, which slows the target until the end of your next turn (normally not that great since it would expire, but with World Serpent's Grasp you or your allies can prone the target) or Weakening Challenge at epic (which means that the triggering attacks do half damage, which is amazing), and if you take the Hospitalier paragon path you're also going to be healing your target every time your divine challenge target makes an attack that doesn't include you. Meanwhile Champion of Order has a power that dazes and weakens a target for as long as it's marked by you, which means that you can mess up your target for an entire fight if you get one of the powers that adds an encounter-long divine sanction to the target. And if the paladin and/or the party invests in radiant damage, things get a lot more painful for the target of the sanction or challenge. Paladins also have a lot of nice support that boosts their ability to act as a secondary leader by healing and granting saves, which means that your actual leader can focus more on enabling. Paladins also have a lot of good feat support to keep them and others upright, like Hero's Poise (whenever you succeed at a saving throw, add your Charisma modifier to the saves of every ally within 5 for a turn) which combos well with feats like Superior Will or Disciple of Freedom that let you make a save at the start of your turn. You can use Lend Health to boost your healing abilities so that your heals are competitive with a real leader, which is excellent if you MC into a class like bard or warlord and then power-swap in some healing power. Since Divine Challenge and Divine Sanction function at range then a properly built paladin is up there with a swordmage as one of the best tag-team partners with a good ground-control defender like a fighter or warden who can take an enemy that the paladin marked and then drag them away from the paladin, forcing them to either fight the defender and eat the paladin's punishment (and probably miss the attack) or try to bypass the fighter in order to get to the paladin. Core paladins aren't that great, but paladins with the support from the rest of the edition are excellent defenders. Cavaliers have a lot more problems though, because their punishment mechanic is just Divine Challenge's damage except it takes an OA and doesn't stack with any of the cool poo poo that Divine Challenge stacks with. They have a few nice powers and can still use some of the paladin's support but then again so can a tiefling knight to some extent.
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Aug 31, 2016 05:57
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P.d0t posted:For the purposes of retrocloning/hacking and mining ideas, are there any sort of unifying mechanics that Controllers all share? Or is the role just a mixed bag of status effects, zones, and minion clearance? Basically this. I personally feel like controllers are a sort of lovely archetype that generally makes the game play worse, and for the most part they are not something I'd really want to include in a 4e-based homebrew. I feel like their effects generally vary between 'mostly useless' and 'won the fight in one move', which makes them pretty unfun. Defenders do the controller's job in a much more interesting and interactive way than "stand back and poo poo AOE dazes/blinds over everything". P.d0t posted:Likewise, are there any Defender mechanics that do a particularly good/bad job of fulfilling their role? I always hear the Paladin one get poo poo on for only doing damage, and not enough of it. These are my opinions of what I like to play for defenders and less about sheer mechanical strength. Good:
Bleh:
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Aug 31, 2016 06:24
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If anything I'd introduce a much stricter divide between Leaders and Controllers, where Leaders are strictly "beneficial effects on allies" and Controllers are "hindering effects on enemies." As it is, Leaders kinda do both, and it leaves Controllers hurting for a niche outside of a vague "mass attacks".
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Aug 31, 2016 06:31
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Controllers mostly monopolizing the idea of negative status effects on enemies would be fine, and if you neutered the poo poo out of their damage you could have a lot of fun with it, design-wise. Preventing the GM from fully playing the combat part of the game game is always satisfying 
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Aug 31, 2016 06:34
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As a side-question, would you say the mark penalty or the mark punishment is generally more important to being a good Defender? If you were to replace the marking mechanic with [something equally good], could you keep Defender AC at the same level as everyone else, instead of it always being slightly higher? edit: i.e. If you gave Defenders a generic MBA++ when an enemy moves or shifts away from them (more damage + stops movement, knocks prone, slows, weakens, etc.) would you still need to give Defenders an increase in survivability in the form of AC, working from the assumption that they'll eat more attacks? Or is the AC just there because of how Marking math works? P.d0t fucked around with this message at 06:48 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 06:43
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Kinda depends on what that is, since the marking/punishment mechanic interacts with the higher AC (giving enemies the basic choice of "attack the defender and probably waste the attack, or attack his allies at a penalty and get attacked back"). I'd say the punishment is more important. Defender AC is generally more than 2 points higher than everyone else's, and enemies still have a better chance hitting an ally at -2 than hitting the defender regularly.
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Aug 31, 2016 06:50
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The best defender builds will not only stack up their mark punishment until it is significant, but develop some kind of punishment for attacking the defender too. I would say the -2 penalty and the AC both are things that help this along, but are not crucial parts of it (mark punishment on the other hand is a crucial component). What you'll see are builds that go even farther into building extra defenses or put more resources into their catch-22.
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Aug 31, 2016 06:57
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S.J. posted:Controllers mostly monopolizing the idea of negative status effects on enemies would be fine, and if you neutered the poo poo out of their damage you could have a lot of fun with it, design-wise. Preventing the GM from fully playing the combat part of the game game is always satisfying The problem becomes when you completely remove the GM from the combat game with a Psion.
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Aug 31, 2016 06:58
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Kurieg posted:The problem becomes when you completely remove the GM from the combat game with a Psion. Well, right. But in the homebrew discussion, you could definitely design a system of classes where controllers have that particular niche.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:00
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Kurieg posted:The problem becomes when you completely remove the GM from the combat game with a Psion. Or a nerf rogue, or really any psychic keyword-centric character. Heavy control slows the game down to a crawl and removes all tension from encounters.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:02
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FWIW, I generally like the idea that Strike! goes with, by splitting Blaster off from Controller. The designs I'm working on are kinda unique, in that you can't really give penalties to the enemy, so all forms of support are bonuses to you or your allies and/or just extra attacks or damage against/onto enemies. So effectively, Controller is kinda blurring together with Leader; Blaster kind of exists, though. Kurieg posted:The problem becomes when you completely remove the GM from the combat game with a Psion. Yeah this is a potentially bad time. Hard control makes solo fights too easy, and from a thematic perspective, fighting the titular Dragons in a titular Dungeon should be A Big Deal. Further along in the line, 4e gave solos a bunch of "Nope" abilities to get around the meanest status effects, but IMHO, if you're gonna design something from the ground up, maybe taking things like Stun off the table is a better angle to attack the design from.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:05
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Making a human bard again. Do I go with the 18 13 13 10 10 8 spread or a 16 16 13 11 10 8 spread pre-race boost? We start at level 6, end at level ??? and I'm a valor bard that requires 13 int for swordmage multiclass to make my sword an implement.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:37
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In comparison to the MMO/WoW model, there's really only Defenders, Strikers and Leaders, with Strikers expected to be capable of dealing both single-target AND AOE/anti-minion damage. And then the debuffs are generally spread out across all the different classes. The Rift MMO did split off "Support" into its own separate group role, and that generally came down to both offering buffs and debuffs, but either way, the scope for such things is a lot more limited in the tabletop environment because a lot of the effects we consider standard in the digital space would take too long to play out in pen-and-paper. A Hunter escalating from Basic Shot to Advanced Shot to Expert Shot while weaving in two timed DOT Shots isn't ever going to pull that off in a D&D-like where you don't want combat to take more than maybe 4 to 5 rounds max. On a somewhat related note, how would you guys feel about a game where you just outright didn't allow Controllers?
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Aug 31, 2016 07:39
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Yukari posted:Making a human bard again. Do I go with the 18 13 13 10 10 8 spread or a 16 16 13 11 10 8 spread pre-race boost? We start at level 6, end at level ??? and I'm a valor bard that requires 13 int for swordmage multiclass to make my sword an implement. Why don't you just play 20 Cha 14 Int then?
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Aug 31, 2016 07:40
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Yukari posted:Making a human bard again. Do I go with the 18 13 13 10 10 8 spread or a 16 16 13 11 10 8 spread pre-race boost? We start at level 6, end at level ??? and I'm a valor bard that requires 13 int for swordmage multiclass to make my sword an implement.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:41
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OneThousandMonkeys posted:Why don't you just play 20 Cha 14 Int then? Must be Valor bard. My Lovely Horse posted:If it's just about the implement, songblades aren't an option? Can you cast implement spells through songblades? And I assume that in choosing a songblade, I can't use any other type of magic blade, right? I haven't picked out equipment, so it may or may not be an option. Also 13 int opens up some MC opportunities that I might like. It's the first time for me considering going with an 18 main stat. Normally I go with 16 16, but everyone on this board suggests 18 main because it's just that good, and I mostly agree. Would any of the above change if I went half-elf instead of human for the +2 con?
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Aug 31, 2016 07:50
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Yep, songblades specifically work as implements for bards. They are an enchantment though, that's true, so they're gonna be your magic weapon period. But they do usually have an item power beyond just the implement property. I never thought the difference between 16 and 18 was that important. All other factors being equal, it's only gonna come up in 5% of all cases. You should have an 18 but if you need the points somewhere else, 16's fine. Or considering you start at level 6, 17 and make it 18 at level 4.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:57
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Instead of just debufs and such for controllers when i made my lovely retroclone I turned them into masters of area denial and forced movement the base mechanic was each of my controllers could create zones of hindering or damaging terrain and then had a bunch of forced movement options to take advantage of that.
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Aug 31, 2016 07:59
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LightWarden posted:Nope, controllers don't have any real unified mechanic like leaders (and defenders and strikers) do, this has been a point of discussion before. The funniest thing you can do with a Paladin is that one build which marks pretty much everything, gives them enormous penalties to hit anyone but it, then removes itself from play. Repeatedly. Or there is one trick you can pull with (IIRC) a Dragonborn Paladin that picks a single target and makes it impossible for it to attack anyone at all, because your mark forces it to attack you (actually forces it, as IIRC an item power) and your PP feature prevents it from doing so.
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Aug 31, 2016 08:37
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Free the post.
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Aug 31, 2016 08:49
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thespaceinvader posted:The funniest thing you can do with a Paladin is that one build which marks pretty much everything, gives them enormous penalties to hit anyone but it, then removes itself from play. Repeatedly. If you get something like a tiefling paladin saint then removing the paladin from play is about the only way to make sure the paladin doesn't take a turn. Intentionally removing yourself from play is probably the Voidsoul Genasi gimmick build. The item is probably the Symbol of the Champion's Code which has a great power that can be used to a variety of comical ends since you can also use it any time you can force an enemy into a situation where they can't attack you such as when you're out of reach of a melee-only enemy or you've got an enemy tied down. Technically an allied defender can even overwrite your mark and you can still benefit from the item's power (along with powers like Restricting Smite).
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Aug 31, 2016 08:58
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LightWarden posted:If you get something like a tiefling paladin saint then removing the paladin from play is about the only way to make sure the paladin doesn't take a turn. Intentionally removing yourself from play is probably the Voidsoul Genasi gimmick build. Yep, the first is the Voidsoul one, the second is Symbol of the Champion's Code plus Fear Walker PP IIRC.
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Aug 31, 2016 09:25
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gradenko_2000 posted:On a somewhat related note, how would you guys feel about a game where you just outright didn't allow Controllers? It's worked great so far. Wait, I guess we did briefly have invokers from 1-3 and like 8-11 or something. Still, that was over a year ago at this point and I can hardly remember. This is a welcome change from my Dark Sun campaign before this, which had a Dishearten-Aug-2-spamming dreamform psion. It taught me to be really, really generic when I was giving my Solos (and to an extent Elites) condition mitigation. If you follow the MV example and only give advantages vs. specific lists of conditions like dominate/stun and sometimes daze/immobilize, it doesn't work so well. Because the thing is, a -8 to attacks really might as well be a stunlock, and there's no handy condition keyword to negate it. Then you have to walk a pretty fine line between exciting fights, and allowing Controllers to do their thing. I think I might have overdone the mitigation side of things, which is what led to ... well, the fact that I have no controllers in my Zeitgeist game. 
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Aug 31, 2016 13:56
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gradenko_2000 posted:On a somewhat related note, how would you guys feel about a game where you just outright didn't allow Controllers?
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Aug 31, 2016 15:24
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slydingdoor posted:Should I take the hint and reroll my wizard? Ahahaha no that's not pertaining to our game! I'd never do that unless you want to of your own accord. There's always more monsters to spawn. [I should probably take the hint myself and start deviating from the dungeon's small-count fights]
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Aug 31, 2016 15:29
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gradenko_2000 posted:On a somewhat related note, how would you guys feel about a game where you just outright didn't allow Controllers? I don't really see the point; controllers don't fill a niche, so you can play with or without them without changing how the game works significantly. If you want to do something, just disallow Controllers until you have a Leader, a Defender and two Strikers. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 17:11 on Aug 31, 2016 |
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Aug 31, 2016 15:37
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The only major problem part of controllers I feel are the ones that crap out numerical to-hit penalties and multi-target hard control. Which...is mostly limited to Wizard and Psion. Invoker I think has a burst Stun as a L1 daily but it dazes them, and while you can mitigate that, they tend to have to take a negative to stun something.
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Aug 31, 2016 17:10
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