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Prism posted:In the game I'm running, we have one controller but she's a druid. (Also an archery warlord, a ranger, and a paladin.) Are these are hard to build as wizards? She's been one of the MVPs so far but this is still real early on. Druids are ridiculously good. Back when LFR was a thing I was able to solo entire scenarios once I hit level 3.
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Jul 21, 2018 22:57
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Invokers and Druids are probably the two best controllers. But also, controller as a role is pretty superfluous because WotC never really figured out what they wanted to do with them that wasn't already being accomplished by the other three roles.
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Jul 22, 2018 00:47
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Yep, it's by far the most disposable of the roles. Also, paradoxically, played well, it has the biggest impact of any of them. The problem is that controllers mostly work by making combats boring for everyone else...
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Jul 22, 2018 01:08
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Yeah. I played a Mage once, and that was just kinda a bad idea for everyone involved. We sure won fights. Really, really boring, but we won.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:01
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Our druid is mostly splitting her time between adding debuffs and doing animal things. I'm just as happy to have someone who is willing to fight more in melee since it's mostly just the paladin, since both of the other two characters prefer bows! She hasn't made it boring, at least not yet.
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Jul 22, 2018 02:45
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it also bears noting that "Controller" was a role that WOTC decided to invent for the Wizard in order to keep the Wizard specifically better than other classes, because they still couldn't quite completely shed all vestiges of grognardism coming from 3e. it's the same reason why Rituals, despite being a mechanic that's sort of intended to be generically available to everyone, is still heavily reliant on Intelligence and is freely available to Wizards, but not to, say, Fighters. and why Wizards get to swap out their Daily powers on an "every Extended Rest" basis because of the spellbook mechanic made just for them, but no other classes can.
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Jul 22, 2018 06:55
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At least they eventually added martial "rituals".
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Jul 22, 2018 07:06
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gradenko_2000 posted:it also bears noting that "Controller" was a role that WOTC decided to invent for the Wizard in order to keep the Wizard specifically better than other classes, because they still couldn't quite completely shed all vestiges of grognardism coming from 3e. In conclusion, wizards must be destroyed. (and replaced with more specialist magic users)
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Jul 22, 2018 10:59
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With the builder at your disposal, the 4E wizard pretty much *is* a specialist if you are building it right. Later on that they added mages that were explicitly specialists. Also: - Other people have disagreed with me before, but I always found their retro-inspired swap-out mechanic completely useless. Early 4E design sometimes over-emphasized versatility in a game that is not really about being versatile, and usually rewards specialization (see also picking an extra at-will as a human, which I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do as opposed to taking Human Effort or whatever dumb thing it was called). - Most of my groups almost completely ignored rituals. Rituals were not implemented well, felt mostly kind of lovely and boring even at high level, with the only obviously good ones being for item crafting.
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Jul 22, 2018 12:39
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Sodomy Hussein posted:- Other people have disagreed with me before, but I always found their retro-inspired swap-out mechanic completely useless. Early 4E design sometimes over-emphasized versatility in a game that is not really about being versatile, and usually rewards specialization (see also picking an extra at-will as a human, which I'm not sure I've ever seen anyone do as opposed to taking Human Effort or whatever dumb thing it was called). Both of these things are basically leftovers from 3.5, I feel. They never really went anywhere as a result, and don't mesh well with the rest of the game.
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Jul 22, 2018 12:48
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Also: Power swap mechanics mostly sucked because your build is probably specializing in something already and you're trading your specialist power for something less optimal. It also overlaps a lot with retraining at level up. Only reason to ever use power swaps is if your upcoming fights are heavily telegraphed and you are trying to take advantage of vulnerabilities. I have used the bonus Human At-Will before, but mostly because of Hybrid rules.  Rituals sucked because they're an explicit resource sink in a game with a heavy item treadmill and the DM is already struggling to have explanations as to why there's a pile of loot after every battle. Technically the costs were scaled so they should have been negligible if the ritual was lower level than you were however the bookkeeping still sucked. Later splats gave free ritual uses via class/feats but it was too little too late.
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Jul 22, 2018 14:32
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to be fair, I'm pretty on-board with the idea that power-swapping and Rituals aren't actually all that great, but they are still vestiges of traditional D&D design that the designers couldn't quite let go of
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Jul 22, 2018 15:22
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isndl posted:Rituals sucked because they're an explicit resource sink in a game with a heavy item treadmill and the DM is already struggling to have explanations as to why there's a pile of loot after every battle. Technically the costs were scaled so they should have been negligible if the ritual was lower level than you were however the bookkeeping still sucked. Later splats gave free ritual uses via class/feats but it was too little too late. Hence why Eberron is the best setting for 4e, since magic weapons are still being produced by the Dragonmarked houses and there are enough forts and fallen bases around that everyone has something. WRT rituals, would they be better if they consumed surges instead of money?
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Jul 22, 2018 15:27
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Moriatti posted:Hence why Eberron is the best setting for 4e, since magic weapons are still being produced by the Dragonmarked houses and there are enough forts and fallen bases around that everyone has something. Rituals costing surges is an idea I've seen kicked around before but there's some caveats to that, with things like classes having uneven surge distributions, surges getting sapped during combat, and rituals having costs more granular than surge counts (ignoring the item creation type stuff). There's probably other niggling issues that would crop up but it's been a while so I can't remember them off the top of my head. Oh yeah, and the time cost of rituals sucks too. Maybe they should just be considered free if performed as part of a long rest instead? And costs/DC checks to do them quickly inside a dungeon, like trying to cast a fast Water Breathing while the room is slowly getting flooded or something.
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Jul 22, 2018 16:03
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I'm actually less of a fan now of the specialist mage than the standard wizard, because they were too good at making the fight dull. Wasn't the one pushing for the wizard to be The Best at something Mearls? I'm not sure how to balance rituals. I know I played a game where I had way too much impact with my world altering encyclopedia, which were dirt cheap for that level (mid paragon game). Surges makes for weird interactions, like the monk or barbarian (or warlock) better at casting lots of rituals, while making the rogue or hunter or whatever worse. I hate to say it, but there might need to be some other resource that gets bigger the more you invest in rituals, like power points for psionics. I feel like that could rapidly go down the road of feat taxes, however.
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Jul 22, 2018 16:10
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Sodomy Hussein posted:Sleep is very nearly best-in-slot, but his list is really unfocused, there's nothing he's specializing in. Magic Missile is considered an underwhelming power, for instance, unless you dedicate resources to making it good, like Blackstaff Apprentice (as a spell it provides consistent pressure against high-AC and most insubstantial enemies). Wizard is a bit challenging and the best choices are un-intuitive compared with past iterations of the D&D wizard. Their strongest spells usually have the psychic or charm tag and have strong forced movement or disabling effects. Wizards who try to dedicate themselves to damage just don't really shine. Magic missile would be a fine power - as a Wizard class feature that didn't take up a slot, as for the Mage.
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Jul 22, 2018 16:17
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Is there actually anything interesting you can do with Magic Missile other than lightly poke people? For being so iconic, it doesn't seem to have much support.
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Jul 22, 2018 19:44
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bio347 posted:Is there actually anything interesting you can do with Magic Missile other than lightly poke people? For being so iconic, it doesn't seem to have much support. Two things: Minion pop, and have as an ol' reliable sidearm. You can always Hurt Something with Magic Missile. It's always got a use (though it's not always a great use)
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Jul 22, 2018 19:55
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thespaceinvader posted:Magic missile would be a fine power - as a Wizard class feature that didn't take up a slot, as for the Mage. I've honestly been tempted for a little while now to do a remake of the 4E Wizard that ditches the spellbook, gives them Magic Missile as a class feature instead of cantrips (and turns it into a multi-target power for minion-killing), and gives them proper builds named after spell schools (Enchanter/Evoker/Illusionist, just to reuse the names that were already used).
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Jul 22, 2018 19:56
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bio347 posted:Is there actually anything interesting you can do with Magic Missile other than lightly poke people? For being so iconic, it doesn't seem to have much support. Blackstaff Apprentice gets it for free, and can shoot one off as a minor once per encounter. I think they also get a daily where they can  and shoot them off as minors throughout the battle.Shadar-Kai can use Magic Missile as a melee attack, which led to me trying to put together a wizard charge kit on the admittedly spurious logic that getting the charge helmet that adds a damage roll opens up a path to making charge attacks that can't miss and give Magic Missile more damage. I also found the visual of a melee wizard who smacks people with flashes of light amusing. It's good for minion popping but generally a burst will be more efficient. Insubstantial enemies are a real nuisance in 4E and without a specialist like magic missile man can be the hardest fights in the game. It's also good for applying consistent damage to Soldiers. Never missing seems meh at first but consistency obviously pays off over time.
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Jul 22, 2018 20:05
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Lemon-Lime posted:I've honestly been tempted for a little while now to do a remake of the 4E Wizard that ditches the spellbook, gives them Magic Missile as a class feature instead of cantrips (and turns it into a multi-target power for minion-killing), and gives them proper builds named after spell schools (Enchanter/Evoker/Illusionist, just to reuse the names that were already used). I'd give it scaling - add an extra missile per 5 levels, and force targetting to be no more than 1 per target for heroic, 2 per target for paragon, and 3 per target for epic. Or something. And yeah, the biggest use of it is minion popping and force damage which is very, very rarely resisted/immuned. But, 4e has SO much 'if I was playing this again here's how I'd want to fix it'. Magic Missile is just a tiny fraction of that.
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Jul 22, 2018 20:27
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thespaceinvader posted:I'd give it scaling - add an extra missile per 5 levels, and force targetting to be no more than 1 per target for heroic, 2 per target for paragon, and 3 per target for epic. I would straight up make it scale the number of targets, so it starts as 1-2 and goes to 1-3 at Paragon and 1-4 at Epic, or whatever, instead of bothering with "you get one more missile every 5 levels but can't allocate more than X missiles per target."
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Jul 22, 2018 20:40
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Lemon-Lime posted:I would straight up make it scale the number of targets, so it starts as 1-2 and goes to 1-3 at Paragon and 1-4 at Epic, or whatever, instead of bothering with "you get one more missile every 5 levels but can't allocate more than X missiles per target." I just like the idea of pounding all of them into one duder sometimes. Maybe an encounter power that lets you shoot all of them at the same target.
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Jul 22, 2018 21:43
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Any advise on building interesting encounters? Ratio of things and all that?
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Jul 22, 2018 21:58
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gradenko_2000 posted:to be fair, I'm pretty on-board with the idea that power-swapping and Rituals aren't actually all that great, but they are still vestiges of traditional D&D design that the designers couldn't quite let go of I think there is a place for rituals, but it's part of the cloud of stuff around combat (like skill challenges) that wasn't properly iterated on. Ideally rituals/skill challenges are something you use to change your circumstances at the story level, or alter the conditions of an upcoming fight. So instead of starting in an ambush, you have surprise instead. Terrain features that worked against you now work to your advantages. You know about traps going into an upcoming fight. But it requires very explicit and mechanical understanding of the meta-fight level, all the things that exist to string a series of fights together into an adventuring day.
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Jul 22, 2018 22:09
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Banana Man posted:Any advise on building interesting encounters? Ratio of things and all that? 1: follow the encounter building guides, they're pretty accurate, but be aware that an at-level encounter is likely to be a bit of a cakewalk for a well optimised party, and don't go below level unless you want them to absolutely trounce it. 2: bear in mind that alpha strikes are a thing, and build in some kind of mechanic to limit them somewhat - in-combat skill challenges, enemies arriving in waves, etc. 3: don't be afraid to reskin stuff. 4: Don't use solos earlier than Nentir Vale. They're horribly poorly designed. 5: Bear your party and their optimisation in mind. Don't throw hordes of minions if they only have single target stuff, etc. Mostly 4e is pretty hard to do badly as long as you stick to the encounter building guidelines.
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Jul 22, 2018 22:18
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Re: magic missile chat. Magic missile before it was changed was a cool, regular at will. It counted as a basic attack IIRC, and there were a bunch of things you could do to trick it out of focus a build around it. But that's wasn't MY VISION of a wizard, and so it was rolled back to it's current useless form.
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Jul 23, 2018 01:26
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Network42 posted:Re: magic missile chat. Just ignore everything ever published in Essentials except for the Rules Compendium and the Monster Vault.
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Jul 23, 2018 01:33
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I was reinstalling my offline builder the other day, tested it every step of the way, and just skipped the CBLoader entirely when I realized it would only add Essentials stuff which I'd then kick out in campaign settings anyway.
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Jul 23, 2018 07:58
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bio347 posted:Is there actually anything interesting you can do with Magic Missile other than lightly poke people? For being so iconic, it doesn't seem to have much support. Hybrid Ranger, trade your Ranger AW for Rapid Shot, use Magic Missile as your RBA with a weaplement as a sort-of-but-not-really AoE attack. Offhand the Master's Wand of Magic Missile to add Push to each Missile. There's more stuff once you get to Paragon and can start applying elemental effects, but you have to be careful to check that it's compatible with a spell that has no attack roll and no damage roll barring shenanigans. Ranger has a lot of 'make a RBA' powers to let you spam MM off turn (Spitting Cobra Stance is great). You can hit Striker DPS expectations with MM this way, assuming you're hitting more than one enemy on your turn. Why yes, I have spent entirely too much time optimizing Magic Missile, why do you ask?
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Jul 23, 2018 08:50
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My Lovely Horse posted:I was reinstalling my offline builder the other day, tested it every step of the way, and just skipped the CBLoader entirely when I realized it would only add Essentials stuff which I'd then kick out in campaign settings anyway. Is this true? I was installing the builder on my new laptop and realized I didn’t have the index file so cbloader didn’t work. If the base + oct2010 update patch gives everything minus essentials, then I’ll be happy.
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Jul 23, 2018 09:06
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Essentials started in September '10, so while I can't guarantee it's everything I figure it's as good as.
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Jul 23, 2018 09:17
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My Lovely Horse posted:Essentials started in September '10, so while I can't guarantee it's everything I figure it's as good as. There might be some Dragon stuff missing as well.Also Essentials has the Expertise feats, so if nothing else.
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Jul 23, 2018 11:03
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If I still wanted CBLoader, can someone share a PM?
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Jul 23, 2018 12:00
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Dremcon posted:If I still wanted CBLoader, can someone share a PM? I got you
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Jul 23, 2018 12:50
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Doesn't the builder have a built-in function that lets you pick and choose what sourcebooks you want to use?
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Jul 23, 2018 14:31
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Tuxedo Catfish posted:Doesn't the builder have a built-in function that lets you pick and choose what sourcebooks you want to use? It should.
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Jul 23, 2018 15:30
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BetterWeirdthanDead posted:It should. I'm curious if it rolls back errata / nerfs when you do this or if it just has one entry for "Magic Missile" regardless of where it's from.
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Jul 23, 2018 15:30
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thespaceinvader posted:But, 4e has SO much 'if I was playing this again here's how I'd want to fix it'. Magic Missile is just a tiny fraction of that. Not to pick on you in particular, but I've definitely seen this general idea of "fixing 4e" thrown around over the years. Hell, I think Strike grew out of that whole concept, for better or worse. However, I'm curious as to what people think are the major things that should be fixed in 4e above and beyond the very obvious stuff (like the monster math and feat taxes, DTAS would probably be in here too).
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Jul 23, 2018 16:14
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I sort of think it's a little like six-of-one, half-dozen-of-the-other situation as far as "fixing" 4e goes, because if you have the Character Builder, then you can implement a "soft" houserule of giving the feat taxes for free and hitting the inherent bonus button and working with that. On the other hand, if you go as far as implementing full DTAS and a more comprehensive inherent bonus system and all that stuff, then you're making yourself really incompatible with the Character Builder, which means you either have to build an entirely new system to give yourself a fully functional set of powers (which is a huge task beyond what most people are willing to do) ... or you use the powers from the books themselves, but then that means you have to skim the books outside of the Character Builder and maybe build your own character sheet, which introduces its own set of complications itself (even if the houserules might make it technically easier).
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Jul 23, 2018 16:29
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