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neonchameleon posted:The main downside is juggling weapons and implements.
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Aug 23, 2020 10:16
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Maxwell Lord posted:Well right, but you don't need the right racial bonus to get a 16 or even an 18, those are in the arrays. It's impossible to get 18 in your primary and 16 in your secondary without at least one +2 from species. Either of the literally only two arrays that matter (18/14/11/10/10/8 or 16/16/13/11/10/8) will get you to 18/16 as long as you pick a species that gives you bonuses to at least one of your stats. The maths, especially at higher levels, are absolutely built around you having a starting 18 in your primary and a starting 16 in your secondary. Getting 20 in your primary is what people have settled on as the "optimal" choice without it being strictly necessary. The fact that 4E expects you to reskin things and the problems with its maths (especially at higher levels) are very well-known, so acting like "wow I thought 4E was supposed to be perfect? Trap sprung lmao" is very  .
Lemon-Lime fucked around with this message at 08:51 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 23, 2020 10:54
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Lemon-Lime posted:It's impossible to get 18 in your primary and 16 in your secondary without at least one +2 from species. Either of the literally only two arrays that matter (18/14/11/10/10/8 or 16/16/13/11/10/8) will get you to 18/16 as long as you pick a species that gives you bonuses to at least one of your stats. The maths, especially at higher levels, are absolutely built around you having a starting 18 in your primary and a starting 16 in your secondary. That seems counter to what the devs actually said, unless you've got a source that says otherwise. If you get a 16 in your primary (i.e. a +3) and the average weapon/implement (+2) you've got a +5 to your attacks, +3 for some weapons which makes it +6, average level 1 monster AC is 15, hence, you hit on a 10 or a 9, meaning a 55%-60% chance. So generally speaking you can look at the dice and say "Oh it's double digits, I hit." (Now you can get this even higher, the fighter gets a +1 to either one-handed or two-handed so they can potentially have +7, 65%, Rogues get a dagger bonus, etc.) Now it does slow down at later levels, that's generally agreed as a mistake (though the assumption was people would be getting more synergy bonuses) and why the DM should give out the Improved feats at... 5 or so, I think the consensus was? Like worst case scenario in this you're essentially one point of bonus behind, meaning you hit 5% less. This may be notable but you're not exactly dragging the party down either.
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Aug 23, 2020 20:53
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As we well know, though, there's really no good reason to play a character who doesn't have 20 in their attack stat from level 1.
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Aug 24, 2020 03:54
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While 4E is the best D&D, it's still D&D and it can't entirely escape the contradiction between the urge to make narrative decisions "real" (or at least weighty) by embodying them in mechanical consequences on the one hand, and the absolute freedom to be whatever you want on the other. e: I actually tend to come down on the former side, but "death to abilities scores" is equally justifiable either way; for the former because it represents a false choice, for the latter because it represents an inhibition on free choice. Tuxedo Catfish fucked around with this message at 04:06 on Aug 24, 2020 |
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Aug 24, 2020 04:04
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So, I'm thinking about how to put basic tactics into games that don't have them, and the thing that jumped to mind was "monster roles" from 4e are intentionally generic tactical roles. But I haven't played a lot of 4e. What monster roles are the most important in your opinion? Are there any that are not useful? (For instance, I had heard that 'Soldier' wasn't especially enjoyable compared to 'Brute'.) Are the player character roles required to 'match up' with these monster roles?
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Aug 27, 2020 15:38
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They broadly match up with player roles, but only very broadly, and they;re more relevant to larger squad tactics usually. Soldiers aren't particularly a general problem, but they were a bit of an issue early on when the maths were still a little wonky, as their AC and HP tended too high, and the fights tended to get way too long and dull. There's definitely no need to match role to role. Monster tactics vary wildly between different monster types, much more so than between roles. A group of Goblins will fight very differently from a group of Orcs, from a group of Hobgoblins, and so on.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:14
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It's worth bearing in mind how the roles employ 4e's basic tactical moves - pushes, pulls and slides, various interactions with difficult terrain and so on. If whatever system you're using has similar moves it's definitely worth thinking about what kind of creature would use which moves and in what circumstances. Brutes shove people around, lurkers shift through defenses to exploit weak points, etc Ultimately you want to ask how the encounter should make your players feel, and use the rules available to accomplish that. The other thing that makes 4e really fun tactically is setting out a good battle arena. Use multiple levels, use difficult terrain, have things the players can interact with to change the battle. Whatever little buffs or status modifiers you have available to you, give the party lots of situational opportunities to use them.
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Aug 27, 2020 20:41
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And like any edition of any system known to man. Also be sure to sanity check DCs if you are reading from a module. My friends still joke about the level one encounter setpiece of "You can climb onto a table for 1 tile of movement. But it takes a DC 30 athletics check to Jump onto the bar counter. (PS, the drinks will easily catch on fire)" More broadly, my pals and I also joke about how often the DC to discover a trap is the same or higher as the one to disarm it, even with hand written homebrew. In everything from DnD to star wars. Of course, Death to ability scores™ would only matter there if the sneaky guy was actually GOOD at finding traps, not merely scraping in to meet par even after class perks 
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Aug 27, 2020 21:35
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DalaranJ posted:So, I'm thinking about how to put basic tactics into games that don't have them, and the thing that jumped to mind was "monster roles" from 4e are intentionally generic tactical roles. But I haven't played a lot of 4e. For tactical combat you really need two: Front liner and back liner. Front liners either don't shoot or shoot really badly, losing about half their damage potential. Back liners have good ranged weapons but suck at melee, losing about half their damage potential and not being very well armoured or very tough. At this point you have tactics - can you make it past the front liners to the back liners and beat them down and force them to melee? And can you pin down the front liners so they can't melee you? A big part of why 5e combat is boring is that you can use Str with thrown weapons and Dex with finesse weapons so if you melee that archer they switch from longbow to shortsword still using dex to hit and only dropping a single die size for damage - and if you glue that thug's feet to the floor his throwing axes still use Str to hit and he just drops a die size or two on damage. 4e then broke front liners into Brutes (lightly armoured, all the muscles, and lots of hit points) and Soldiers (heavily armoured and so hard to hit and damage). Brutes were more dangerous and faster, Soldiers were tough and could take a pounding especially for fighters. This was a good decision even if it's a whole lot more fun to fight an ogre than a knight when they are the same challenge level. The ogre does stuff, the knight prevents you doing stuff both through how it fights and through having solid metal armour preventing you hurting it. The next big role in 4e was actually two roles - Vanilla Skirmishers and Situational Skirmishers. Both these are worth having. Vanilla Skirmishers are just simple vanilla monsters with nothing special about them and that can range or melee. Simple to run but utterly uninteresting on their own. There's a case that e.g. kobolds don't have frontliners and backliners - they have Vanilla Skirmishers and Backliners with their frontline being equally skilled with sword and sling while their back line sucks with slings. And orcs don't really have backliners; they have melee orcs and orcs with javelins that are statted as Vanilla skirmishers. A lot of minions were vanilla skirmishers using the "quantity has a quality all of its own" and minimal DM intervention. Situational Skirmishers on the other hand were inherently interesting because they had a high damage type and a low damage type - but it wasn't the range/melee split but something else. Rogues with Sneak Attack would be the obvious example here (low damage if they can't trigger sneak attack, high if they can) - with another that springs to mind being a momentum based type doing extra damage based on how far they moved before they attacked, and another was a specialist charging type. So with situational skirmishers on the field the question is "Can you prevent the enemy doing their thing" - they are about twice as strong if they can as if they can't. So there's a challenge. Talking of situational and interesting as a bit of spice but even less necessary there's the Lurker. Lurkers were weirdness - things like the Bulette that spent one round in two under the ground as a landshark, or a monster that turned invisible every second round and then came out of ambush with a poisoned dagger. When they attacked they did about twice normal damage and were vulnerable (and squishy) - but the next turn they wouldn't attack and would be exceptionally hard to kill. Not remotely a core role but an interesting and scary one for variety because they really do ridiculous amounts of damage. Then at the least important level we reach the Backliner split between Artillery and Controllers. It was meant to be archers vs mages - this split wasn't terribly useful and the main difference was controllers had more debuffs, artillery was mostly about damage. Artillery/back liner was a nice and well defined control - controllers were mostly Mages Are Special. And no it is not at all necessary for PC roles to match up to monster roles. PC roles are designed round what they contribute, monster roles are designed round the counterplay players can use and deliberately have weaknesses to exploit. The other thing 4e did exceptionally well that made tactics interesting was its use of terrain. This is because 4e characters (PC and NPC alike) frequently got to force each other to move without having to give up all or even most of their damage for it (e.g. in a Bull Rush) and without it being complex. This meant that a fight on a dockside would involve pushing people off the docks, a fight round the campfire would involve pushing people into the campfire (more than one NPC in my campaigns has ended up in a latrine or an open sewer), pit traps aren't a "walk round it when you've seen it" thing, and if a bad guy opens the gates of hell the victory is only to be considered complete if you throw the bad guy through the portal they opened. As I've said in the past the ability to interact with terrain this way makes most RPGs feel like the PCs have spent their time acting in front of a green screen.
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Aug 27, 2020 21:43
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Not to mention that PCs and monsters often bring their own hazards, ranging from The Fighter Exists to the sorcerer cast Flame Spiral, to 'if this guy is over there instead of here he gets stunned too when the wizard does his burst, or the rogue can flank for combat advantage and get sneak attack'. 4e's combat system is a very solid small squad tactics game.
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Aug 27, 2020 23:07
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Thinking about roles in general, I'm not sure I love the striker role. Don't get me wrong, damage needs to be done, and it's a role that feels great to play. It's just that because there's a role that's "do damage", everyone else doesn't get to do as much damage. It might be more fun with no striker role, but with the remaining defender, leader and controller roles getting to do a bit more damage.
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Aug 27, 2020 23:14
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You could say much the same about pretty much every role, though? It would be more fun for everyone else if controller as a role didn't exist and everyone else did more control, etc. That way lies a bland mess where everyone is a jack of all trades and master of none. Damage isn't the only thing that's fun in this game, and it's just as fun to do less damage but make the monster sit up and beg if it wants to do anything, or splash 10 minions with one burst whilst the striker is wasting damage picking them off one at a time, or make the striker do it again, but better, or set up massive buffs for the whole party... etc. I never felt like I was missing out on anything by not doing as much damage as a Ranger. Because, sure, they might have spiked one monster into oblivion on their turn, but there are still plenty more to go around. Conversely, I definitely DID sometimes feel like I was missing out on something playing a defender alongside some well-initiative-optimised Wizards. It's a lot harder for a defender to have fun locking down monsters and making them have no good choices when they don't have any choices at all, because they're stunned.
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Aug 27, 2020 23:26
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Gort posted:Thinking about roles in general, I'm not sure I love the striker role. Don't get me wrong, damage needs to be done, and it's a role that feels great to play. It's just that because there's a role that's "do damage", everyone else doesn't get to do as much damage. Ever played a striker hybrid with one of those roles? You ended up with one striker damage feature and pretty similar ability to the other role in the hybrid, just fewer shots of it. So it was basically you could deal striker damage and also defend/lead/control. If you built the character right it usually ended up about 3/4 of each.
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Aug 28, 2020 04:38
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And sometimes you just wanna be the guy who throws the biggest numbers.
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Aug 28, 2020 05:44
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thespaceinvader posted:Conversely, I definitely DID sometimes feel like I was missing out on something playing a defender alongside some well-initiative-optimised Wizards. It's a lot harder for a defender to have fun locking down monsters and making them have no good choices when they don't have any choices at all, because they're stunned. I do dislike excessive amounts of control on PCs when I GM - it's a shame when the monsters don't get to show off their cool abilities 'cause they're perma-stunned or every action has a -10 penalty so they can't ever hit. Conversely, I usually tone down any monster use of the Dominate and Stunned conditions - it sucks for a player to not be able to act. I've recently been houseruling monster Dominate to make the player take a turn-worth of Dominated actions immediately (usually using an at-will on an ally) but still get their turn. Stun I usually just turn into big damage. I like brutes and barbarians, dishing out and taking big amounts of damage, and smacking each other around the map. Gort fucked around with this message at 14:19 on Aug 28, 2020 |
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Aug 28, 2020 14:17
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I get this in theory, but in practice my players seem to love nothing more than rolling attacks against the rest of their party and having to be rescued from themselves. One of mine recently had a Robocop-style Directive 4 reveal and spent a big chunk of combat dominated by the antagonist. I was going to emphasise afterwards it was just a one-off thing and they felt like they could resist it now, but they seemed to enjoy telling the rest of the party that it might happen again so much that I decided to leave it dangling over their head.
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Aug 28, 2020 14:43
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How about this: A monster with at-will dominate save ends
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Aug 28, 2020 14:51
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I think dominate/stun are mostly problematic because 4e rounds can take a rather long time, and combat itself may only be 4-5 rounds, so you're missing out on your main spotlight moment every 10-15 minutes and also possibly 20% of your entire contribution. If your rounds are snappier (either fewer or faster players) then it's probably a non issue
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Aug 28, 2020 14:54
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Gort posted:I do dislike excessive amounts of control on PCs when I GM - it's a shame when the monsters don't get to show off their cool abilities 'cause they're perma-stunned or every action has a -10 penalty so they can't ever hit. Conversely, I usually tone down any monster use of the Dominate and Stunned conditions - it sucks for a player to not be able to act. I've recently been houseruling monster Dominate to make the player take a turn-worth of Dominated actions immediately (usually using an at-will on an ally) but still get their turn. Stun I usually just turn into big damage. Holy poo poo, every game with a dominate mechanic needs to adopt this tomorrow.
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Aug 28, 2020 15:18
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I like dominate the way it is, even speaking as someone who really did sit out an entire 2-hour encounter once because I just couldn't make that saving throw. But it really should be the rarest of conditions and have strict guidelines applied to what kind of enemies can have it, what kind of powers can impose it and how long it can last. Like it probably shouldn't ever be on the table until you hit late Paragon tier. I prefer, however, the kind of attack against Will that has the target make an at-will attack and then they're back to their own selves. It's just cleaner.
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Aug 28, 2020 15:52
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I like some solution of being able to burn resources (in 4e I guess it would be surges, or maybe Action Points) to downgrade conditions. So, if you get Dominated, you can burn 1 surge to be Stunned instead, or 2 to be Dazed instead, 3 to just lose your minor action, or 4 to be fine. And so on down the stack, if Stunned, surge to be dazed, 2 to lose your minor, 3 to be fine, &C &C. Maybe only as a daily or encounter power that everyone has, maybe not, depending on how common the condition infliction is, but I really, really dislike 'Don't Do Stuff (Save ends)' on a monster at all.
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Aug 28, 2020 16:37
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I vaguely remember a paragon path or epic destiny that had that as a power. Take damage to ignore conditions. It was called something like Juggernaut but I don't remember exactly what. I'm not sure I love the idea of tying it to surges because I think it'd exacerbate the 4e adventuring day problem - players can just spend a surge any time they get a bad condition, and then it falls on the GM to punish them for running out of surges, which isn't really any fun for anyone.
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Aug 28, 2020 16:57
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That's the dreadnaught, iirc.
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Aug 28, 2020 17:10
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On a similar note, what's a good model for possession? I was going to have the critter share a space with the PC and make attacks from their square (no stun or dominate for the possessee, dazed at worst) with some sort of "shared damage" gimmick. Ideas?
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Aug 28, 2020 17:44
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So I assume you're going more for a "hostile arm growing out of PC's chest" possession than a "malevolent spirit assumes control" possession, then?
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Aug 28, 2020 22:05
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Would you play it differently? Either way I think I'd have the occupying entity still be punch-able and have the character be able to wrest away control for long enough to take actions each turn. Like any number of possession scenes in media where you're fighting your own body for control. The particular scenario in my game involves one of the PCs having (technically half-)died in her backstory. When they go to the Underworld, her angry (half-)ghost doppelganger is going to try and steal a living body. Repossession is Nine-Tenths of the Law (Standard Action, Melee Touch, Recharge 6) +blah vs Will, Target: One grabbed [Charname]. The ghost of [charname] possesses them. They occupy the same space. [Charname] is dazed, and half of any damage ranged or melee attacks deal to the ghost is dealt to [Charname] instead. The possession deals ongoing 5 psychic damage and lasts until [charname] escapes from the grab. Five Eyes fucked around with this message at 23:40 on Aug 28, 2020 |
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Aug 28, 2020 22:43
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I’ve never been a huge fan of recharge rolls for powers, I always prefer just giving it a specific number of turns (usually 2-4). It averages out about the same without swinging into either “uses it every goddamn turn” or “uses it once then never again”.
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Aug 28, 2020 23:48
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Recharge has no right to exist when Reliable does tbh.
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Aug 29, 2020 00:34
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How about having it so that instead of damage being half-and-half, any area attacks do full damage to both and any melee or ranged attacks do full damage to the possessor, but on a miss they target the victim as if they'd hit.
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Aug 29, 2020 07:59
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Plutonis posted:Recharge has no right to exist when Reliable does tbh. So, the dragon breathes fire every turn till it hits someone, then never again? I think I prefer once every other turn or every three turns.
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Aug 29, 2020 10:29
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Plutonis posted:Recharge has no right to exist when Reliable does tbh. e: I always played recharge as "roll to see if the enemy uses it this turn." My Lovely Horse fucked around with this message at 16:03 on Aug 29, 2020 |
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Aug 29, 2020 15:21
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Recharge rolls are annoying, to be honest. I'd far prefer them to just be 'every other turn' or 'recharge when bloodied', and that IIRC was often how I ran them. The rolls are a faff and super easy to forget.
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Aug 29, 2020 16:02
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thespaceinvader posted:Recharge rolls are annoying, to be honest. I'd far prefer them to just be 'every other turn' or 'recharge when bloodied', and that IIRC was often how I ran them. The rolls are a faff and super easy to forget. Yeah, and having a random chance of recharging just makes it hard to predict when enemies are going to get to use their big abilities.
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Aug 29, 2020 17:29
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Seems like it’d be best to make recharge rolls at the end of a monster’s turn and announce the result so that players can plan around it on their next turns.
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Aug 29, 2020 17:45
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My players always had plenty of analysis paralysis without that particular factor.
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Aug 29, 2020 17:50
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My Lovely Horse posted:My players always had plenty of analysis paralysis without that particular factor. I think it would actually reduce analysis paralysis, because if you don't know whether the dragon's going to be able to breathe on its next round, you have to make blind bets about your positioning - is it safe for us to group up and melee it, or should we spread out to hedge against it getting a high-value AoE? If we definitely know it can or can't put down a damaging 5x5 somewhere our best move is a lot clearer.
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Aug 29, 2020 18:04
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I like the recharge mechanic because it adds an element of randomness to the enemy attacks so that each round is not entirely predictable. The best move shouldn't always be clear, and you should always be wary of the breath weapon when fighting dragons because it's a dragon.
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Aug 29, 2020 18:46
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It looks like we won't get to the ghost this session so I'll have to report back in a couple weeks to let you know how it worked out. My players understand on-bloodied triggers and recharges for enemies but haven't been very good about dice-roll recharges, even when the rolls are announced and public. (I've also had elite and solo enemies have powers recharge after AP use.) I think I'll want to be better about prompting the party for use of knowledge checks so they can know what they're dealing with - most fights don't last long enough for learn-by-observation to meaningfully change their tactics.
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Aug 29, 2020 19:31
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I had to drop playing games for awhile because of some personal stuff but after tagging into a couple sessions of a 5e game recently I just kinda hated it and covid basically ended the game for most of the folks. So... I'm going to run a couple one-shots to teach them the 4e system and probably a little campaign I've had floating around in my head for awhile. I thought maybe I'd bang out some characters for one top of heroic tier/paragon one-shot, have them make their own for the next in low heroic, and maybe they carry it on to a campaign if it goes. Any particular recommendations, either prebuilts or general concepts for any of that? Additionally, I wanted to skim the charop stuff I used to before, just to refresh my brain on any obvious traps or great choices for classes but I guess the wotc forum got deleted, did they get archived anywhere?
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Aug 30, 2020 16:51
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