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Monks are strikers. Strikers in general are all about putting out a ton of hurt on one target. Focused fire. Monks' gimmick is actually AOE damage, so instead of being concentrated on one target that you want dead RIGHT NOW, like most other strikers, your damage ends up spread out around a handful of targets in melee range*. And if you want AOE damage, why have an AOE class that can only target enemies in their immediate vicinity when you can just build a blaster wizard or sorcerer who can drop area bursts from far away, wherever they please? * I mean, sure, you could just target one enemy with your attacks, but monks' damage scaling is built under the assumption that they'll be hitting multiple targets, so their damage per-target is noticeably lower than other strikers.
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Jun 27, 2018 00:24
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Banana Man posted:Also are this point is there a consensus on what the best and worst destined classes are? I remember hearing monks weren’t do great at one point but didn’t play the game enough to understand why 4e monks were the first monks to actually be good in any version of D&D. Not the absolute best class (as mentioned above) but they are effective enough; you don't need as much damage as a slayer when you have enough mobility to make it to the back lines and beat up the mages and archers and make sure they can't get away, and the survivability to stay there. How highly you rate them depends on how much you enjoy the playstyle. The actually bad classes were the assassins (both versions), the vampire, the Crusader (scaling mark punishment is a thing), the Hunter (no non-standard attacks) and the spamtastic psionic classes (which didn't lack power but managed to be spamtastic without being as simple as the slayer or elementalist). I'm not sure Runepriest or Seeker were ever worth it, but that came down in the runepriest's case to being more fiddly than it was worth. Oh, and the Bladesinger gets a lot of hate, often justified.
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Jun 27, 2018 00:34
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Other legitimately bad classes included the other Heroes of Shadow classes, blackguard and especially binder. Hexblade was mechanically interesting (pact weapon!) but also underpowered, and everybody just forgets the bladesinger was ever even a thing because it was so bad. Seeker sucked until the one Dragon issue came out that gave it an area attack, which made it just sub-par. Runepriest is okay and doesn't deserve to be in the truly bad category. I'd argue that witch is as close as you can get to "bad" while still resembling a wizard (bladesingers don't count--they don't even resemble wizards, they just use their powers). To no one's surprise, nearly all of the legitimately bad classes are essentials classes, barring a couple of exceptions where they tried weird mechanics that didn't work and just gave up rather than trying to salvage the class. Dick Burglar fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jun 27, 2018 |
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Jun 27, 2018 00:38
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Hunter isn't all that bad. A Seeker multiclass helps a lot.
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Jun 27, 2018 00:59
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I made a slayer for a campaign and even though it's still going on the regret is still strong 
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Jun 27, 2018 01:40
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Vampires are bad but make a hilarious hybrid option.  A lot of the flaws with the Essentials classes comes from effectively zero support past Heroic tier.
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Jun 27, 2018 01:40
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Plutonis posted:I made a slayer for a campaign and even though it's still going on the regret is still strong Can you just... remake the character? Be like "Hey, I don't wanna Slayer, let me X instead"? I can't remember if all the worst classes come from essentials, but I do think it's telling that the one essentials class I feel is a little too easy to make too powerful is the Mage. So, carefully making the Ranger, Rogue, and Fighter into ultra-simplified basic attackers, and then give a whole list of new options to wizards.
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Jun 27, 2018 02:40
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Runepriest was fun for the brief time I was playing one.
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Jun 27, 2018 03:07
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What are the best ways to speed up combat without super intensive houserules? Would things like "monsters have half health and do double damage" be okay? This is on top of the updated monster math.
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Jun 27, 2018 15:57
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Reik posted:What are the best ways to speed up combat without super intensive houserules? Would things like "monsters have half health and do double damage" be okay? This is on top of the updated monster math. You're looking for First Level Damage Forever. I don't know if the above link is the only person who's worked it out, there may be others with a smoother expression curve or whatever. Hopefully someone who's played 4E more recently can help out if so.
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Jun 27, 2018 16:00
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:You're looking for First Level Damage Forever. the easiest way to eyeball First Level Damage Forever is to add the monster's level to all of its damage rolls.
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Jun 27, 2018 16:03
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What's the flip side on that so players are taking down monsters as fast as they were at level 1?
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Jun 27, 2018 18:17
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I played a 1 to 30 game. Going by rounds, it was the same. The issue later is the sheer number of options. Either limit those options, or the players really need to know what their characters have available. I had a group once that really knew their characters, generally decided what to do before their turn, and generally paid attention even when it wasn't their turn, and high level play actually went really fast. Unfortunately, the less of that even one person does, the more it encourages everyone else to abandon good practices. One person takes a 5 minute turn, two other people stop paying attention, making THEIR turns take longer, etc.
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Jun 27, 2018 20:32
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Yeah, IME it's mainly the out-of-turn actions that exacerbate combat length. Still, you can try the following? (1) double the number of enemies. (2) use MM3 damage expressions, not 1st Level Damage Forever. (3) Cut HP in half. Or heck, use 1st Level Forever anyways to turn the heat up. Epic tier characters can take it.
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Jun 27, 2018 21:26
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How much of the time spent is players trying to decide between actions? If it's a lot, giving the ones with AP suggestions for simpler classes could cut out a lot of umms and ahhhs.
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Jun 28, 2018 18:03
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I like giving easily overwhelmed people bow rangers. 1. Quarry. 2. Stay back. 3. Fire as many shots as possible. It's not perfect but it's definitely good enough.
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Jun 28, 2018 20:24
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dwarf74 posted:Hunter isn't all that bad. A Seeker multiclass helps a lot. It's not bad, but past mid-Paragon an o-ranger does the same or better control and WAY the gently caress more damage. Worst classes in the game as it ended up are without a doubt the Binder and the Vampire.
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Jun 28, 2018 22:02
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What made the binder so bad? I've really never looked at it
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Jun 29, 2018 00:02
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They tried to make a striker whose "striker" aspect was pretty weak due to a strong secondary focus on controlling into a full controller by hacking out the striker bits... and then basically leaving it there. It can't control worth a poo poo, its damage is terrible, and it's just poorly mechanically designed. Also IIRC some of its mechanics don't even fuckin work but I may be conflating that part with another class.
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Jun 29, 2018 00:12
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Kai Tave made a pretty cool binder, and a while back I started but never finished a similar idea for a DOT class.PMush Perfect posted:Instead of doing something productive, I hammered out a rough prototype for what a good DoT class might look like. No points for guessing what classes I based its effects on. girl dick energy fucked around with this message at 00:51 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 00:44
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Gharbad the Weak posted:What made the binder so bad? I've really never looked at it The major flaw is that a lot of its control abilities only trigger when either you kill something or something adjacent to you dies. The rest of its kit doesn't have the damage or up-front control to really do much.
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Jun 29, 2018 00:52
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They should have just made a 4E version of the Tome of Magic Binder instead.  It would have been pretty easy to make interesting, too: have an Encounter class feature that lets you manifest your Vestige for a minor benefit, then make a list of Vestiges that each have an Encounter and Daily power that you get access to at the normal levels, and have the class learn more Vestiges at levels 3, 7, 13, etc. 4E powers are already pretty clearly silo'd per build, so you'd just be essentially making a class that chooses packages of Encounter+Daily powers instead of choosing them individually, with the gimmick being that you can swap to a different Encounter+Daily for each encounter by manifesting a different Vestige. Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 01:03 on Jun 29, 2018 |
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Jun 29, 2018 00:56
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Dick Burglar posted:Other legitimately bad classes included the other Heroes of Shadow classes, blackguard and especially binder. Hexblade was mechanically interesting (pact weapon!) but also underpowered, and everybody just forgets the bladesinger was ever even a thing because it was so bad. Seeker sucked until the one Dragon issue came out that gave it an area attack, which made it just sub-par. Runepriest is okay and doesn't deserve to be in the truly bad category. I'd argue that witch is as close as you can get to "bad" while still resembling a wizard (bladesingers don't count--they don't even resemble wizards, they just use their powers). You can poach pretty much everything cool about a blackguard onto a paladin chassis at no cost, so at least there's that.
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Jun 29, 2018 01:15
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Party full of vampires biting each other for double surges and creating a perpetual healing surge machine up until anything bad happened at all
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Jun 29, 2018 05:16
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Lemon-Lime posted:They should have just made a 4E version of the Tome of Magic Binder instead. They.. sort of have that. Vestige pact warlock. All your dailies are vestiges that give your at will power a new rider and give you a new pact boon.
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Jul 2, 2018 15:26
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There's probably plenty of classes where you can reskins things to be close enough.
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Jul 2, 2018 15:50
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PMush Perfect posted:Kai Tave made a pretty cool binder, and a while back I started but never finished a similar idea for a DOT class. That's looking pretty cool. Shame it looks like it was abandoned, but I'd play the heck out of that sort of class.
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Jul 2, 2018 22:01
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Spiteski posted:That's looking pretty cool. Shame it looks like it was abandoned, but I'd play the heck out of that sort of class.
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Jul 2, 2018 22:09
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PMush Perfect posted:Well now I kinda wanna work on it again. I'm on mobile and won't have an opportunity for a couple days, but I'll hammer out at least the level 1, maybe even up to 3, and start opening it up for playtesting. I'd definitely be down to testing it. Either post ITT or PM when you've got something to try with?
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Jul 2, 2018 22:43
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Kurieg posted:They.. sort of have that. Vestige pact warlock. All your dailies are vestiges that give your at will power a new rider and give you a new pact boon. Yes, and it sucked. I'm saying there was an easy concept there for making a full class out of the 3.x Binder concept, which is what they should have done instead of making it a mediocre Warlock pact and then giving the name to an even worse Warlock pact in Essentials.
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Jul 5, 2018 11:40
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So despite me having been playing 4E since it came out, for various reasons neither or nor any of my friends have played a full Warlord. The closest we've come are a couple of hybrids, with one of my friends running a not-very-effective Warlord|Paladin, and my current character in one of their campaigns, a more effective (and far mroe hilarious) Barbarian|Warlord (plus multiclass Bard). The first was played at level 9, the second started at 5 and has made it to 6. Tuesday night was the first session of a new campaign because someone wanted to take a turn at the wheel. We started at level 1 since we had a player brand new to D&D (not new to 4E. New to D&D and TTRPGs in general). So I decided to play a Warlord (alongside an Avenger, a Knight, and the newbie's Bard). We got through one combat encounter since this was after work and we're a chatty procrastinatey bunch. Where has this been all my life? I'm hating myself for going all this time and not playing one.
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Jul 5, 2018 14:36
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Lemon-Lime posted:Yes, and it sucked.
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Jul 5, 2018 15:02
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Trasson posted:So despite me having been playing 4E since it came out, for various reasons neither or nor any of my friends have played a full Warlord. The closest we've come are a couple of hybrids, with one of my friends running a not-very-effective Warlord|Paladin, and my current character in one of their campaigns, a more effective (and far mroe hilarious) Barbarian|Warlord (plus multiclass Bard). The first was played at level 9, the second started at 5 and has made it to 6. Yeah, the Warlord is probably only second to the fighter in class concepts 4e really got right.
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Jul 5, 2018 16:52
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The Cleric and Monk are also the best versions of their concept in any edition of D&D. e; and the Sorcerer.
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Jul 5, 2018 17:55
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I need to do battle maps for roll20. Does anyone have experience with doing this? Any useful programs to help me draw battle map images relatively quickly and easily?
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Jul 6, 2018 03:59
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Prism posted:I need to do battle maps for roll20.
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Jul 6, 2018 05:08
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PMush Perfect posted:Depending on how fancy you want to be, you can go anywhere from "just use the line tool and let your players fill in the blanks" to "buy professional mapmaking software". What I and our normal DM like to do is use spritesheets from old video games. She favors Fire Emblem, I'm partial to Shining Force. Still, same basic idea. I was actually thinking about doing something like that. Do you use a program to assemble it or good ol' copy/paste?
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Jul 6, 2018 05:35
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For Battlemaps I'm fond of RPG maker with the mapshot script, since it makes linking up the slots to the roll20 grid very easy.
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Jul 6, 2018 16:38
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Moriatti posted:For Battlemaps I'm fond of RPG maker with the mapshot script, since it makes linking up the slots to the roll20 grid very easy.
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Jul 6, 2018 16:45
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Moriatti posted:For Battlemaps I'm fond of RPG maker with the mapshot script, since it makes linking up the slots to the roll20 grid very easy. PMush Perfect posted:Oh. Yeah that's another excellent idea. I did something similar for a short lived pbp. I'd recommend either XP or VX Ace depending on how cheap you are. VX Ace looks better but you can get XP for chump change. MV(?) is new and expensive and also has fewer free default assets than old editions so they can sell it all as DLC, so I don't recommend that. That's a real good idea, yeah. I actually own VX Ace due to an ill-fated sale some time ago but have barely used the thing. How do you use the mapshot script? I found http://himeworks.com/2013/02/map-screenshot/ but I don't know where to put it.
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Jul 6, 2018 17:00
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