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Bow implement can work for clerics and invokers who can operate entirely from implement attacks, but a bow is bad for avengers and paladins because they can't be entirely implement based, don't have ranged weapon attacks and the paladin would have to sacrifice a shield. It's a pity, because with some extra support in the form of a few at-wills and some patches for a few levels a paladin could be an all-implement defender build; you could even make a bunch of implement powers that require a shield since holy symbols are hands-free and thus you could have shield attacks without suffering from the fighter's accuracy and damage problems. I also have a fair amount of Sehanine characters due to Silvery Glow, but that is ok because she is the best goddess.
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Apr 8, 2015 18:19
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Radiant users still had problems since most of the best radiant support was with Pelor/Amaunator and thus conflicted with worshipping Sehanine, leaving you with the inferior choice of Astral Fire or some form of Focus feat.
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Apr 8, 2015 18:22
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thespaceinvader posted:That's a REALLY bad power by RAW, because RAW, you can't use it with a melee weapon. Ranged keyword + Weapon keyword = needs a ranged weapon to function. Shame, because it would be fine as 'one target in CB5'. I think the note in the Rules Compendium that you couldn't use ranged powers with the weapon keyword with melee weapons or melee powers with the weapon keyword with ranged weapons came later in the game, because it wasn't in the earlier PHB and it also invalidates some powers like the ranger's Sharpshooter Paragon Path in Martial Power, which has the "stab a dude with an arrow, then shoot someone else with an arrow" power that's a melee 1 (though it also has a problem because it doesn't mention the ranged part of the second attack). P.d0t posted:Notably, Cavalier and Blackguard paladins are proficient with all simple and military weapons (including ranged), but if we're talking about anything other than a Daily power, then it's moot. Encounter power, so no dice there.
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Apr 8, 2015 19:37
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Arivia posted:You all took a secret language feat you've never used. 😛 It also provided a Bluff bonus, but none of them have the training and ability to use it. djw175 posted:I have so many characters that would make sense to have Linguist but I just can't justify taking it over actually useful feats. For some weird reason none of the Eberron races speak more than one language (only other race with just Common is the bladeling). Kalashtar at least have telepathy, but changelings are supposed to be masters of disguise and had mastery of language back in 3e. I usually wind up going scholar on a changeling, though a Dex/Cha build doesn't really get much out of Scholar and don't have the Int for Linguist. It's very annoying.
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Apr 14, 2015 18:19
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Zeitgeist's Player's Guide had the Martial Scientist theme, which lets you swap out your theme power for various other abilities that you learn from NPCs during the game. No idea how it works in practice though.
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May 10, 2015 04:29
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Rituals aren't a terrible idea, but it's an underdeveloped system that has too many gates that block off too much of it. Gate 1 is the feat. Many classes get Ritual Caster for free, but many classes also don't, even if their class concept would probably fit (Shaman, for instance is a magical primal leader with no ritual feat). Getting ritual access means not only do you need a feat slot, but you also need to have Religion or Arcana trained, even if you're a Wisdom-based class who has little use for those skills and would prefer to use Nature or Heal-based rituals. Gate 2 is making sure you have the ritual itself. I don't think this is a terrible thing, since it's a tool like bringing a crowbar or rope along with you- nice if you can get a use out of it, but not terrible if you can't provided you didn't spend the bulk of your worth on it. Ridiculously expensive rituals mean you don't see them that often though, and there's little incentive to bring them along just in case. Gate 3 is the time to use it. This may or may not be a bad thing, since it regulates most ritual use to out-of-combat, but it does prevent you from doing interesting things with rituals in the middle of combat. Gate 4 is the component cost. This is a big complaint of mine, because 4e is built on system that assumes a fixed amount of wealth at any given amount of time, so spending money on rituals (or consumables in general such as potions, special ammo and alchemical items) means that you're basically burning up your character's capabilities one tiny piece at a time. Admittedly, at higher levels the low-level options cost so little that the utility ones become some of the most cost-effective methods of handling problems compared to higher level options. This is also a problem that plagued 3e and Pathfinder. Some people let characters use healing surges in place of material costs, but I don't think that's always a great option when the system is as it is since the characters most likely to have ritual access are the characters who tend to have the lowest amount of surges, which puts another gate on their use. I'm not against surge use as an option, especially when you're allowed to spend one or more surges to bypass things such as time Gate 5 is the skill check required. If you're really bad at a particular skill, you're not going to be very good at most of the rituals that require it. I'm not against this option in general, just that I don't think you need both a skill check and a feat to determine access to rituals- honestly I'd rather grant ritual access as an option to anyone who's trained in any of the required skills. My personal idea would be to remove Ritual Caster as a requirement or just grant it for free to anyone who has one or more of the skills used in rituals and wants to actually deal with rituals, and to actually pay for rituals I'd give the party a pool of ritual component GP that replenishes either after an extended rest if you want a simple system or alternatively a larger pool that replenishes whenever you go back to your home base or find a gathering point in the field. I'd actually let it be used for item creation options like potions, consumables, ritual scrolls, magic ammo or even magic items in general with the caveat that whenever you make an item using the pool it depletes the maximum value of the pool until that item is either used up (in the case of consumables), disenchanted and returned to the pool or just bought by a member of the party who decides they really want to keep it around long-term. This gives them more freedom to experiment with rituals, consumables and novelty wondrous items, and gives people who don't want to deal with this poo poo an option to say "nah, let's just spend the extra loot on a couple of low-level items." I still don't know how much the pool would be worth- I'm thinking it's probably equivalent to a magic item of value equal to (Party Level - N), where N depends on how frequently you want it to be used/refilled. The other concern is that high-level characters can spam low-level options under this system, which may not be a problem for some people (since you can already do that in a normal game just by having a pile of real gp), or may require either a cap on the number of times you can use it in one period, number of things you can have on hand at one moment, or enforcing the cast time or something.
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May 29, 2015 19:45
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dwarf74 posted:The Elementalist is really pretty potent. The ice one can not only go permafrost, their encounter power gets a crazy Daze rider eventually. Add in some Arcane Admixture and Rolling Thunder and it's insane. Similarly, if you have access to Eberron Material, Air Elementalist can pick up Mark of Storm and take Lyrandar Wind-rider in Paragon to happily fart high-damage sliding lightning at things forever. thespaceinvader posted:Slayer is probably the most optimisable E-class IME, though Knight comes a close second in Epic thanks to Overwhelming Impact making you daze all the things. Fighters have silly-good striker support that Slayers can steal. Knights are fun because they're basically the only defender where what you do with your standard action isn't really all that important (outside of whatever you picked for Martial Cross Training) because it's the exact same stuff you do off-turn, which makes throwing down a Battle Standard of the Hungry Blade to create a black hole of death every single fight a quality choice. Plus they're one of the only classes in the game where it's not a terrible idea to invest in one of the Power Strike feats from the MME book (specifically Hammer Strike and maybe Flail Strike, which let you turn your OAs into potential turn-enders). Slayer and Scout can potentially do alright with Flail Strike, since it could work as an attack-generator, but that relies on the DM somewhat. Hexblades aren't up to slayer standards, but they're not completely terrible other than the fact that their biggest weakness is that they don't natively get anything resembling an encounter alpha until Quicken Spellcasting at epic. But a hexblade that MCs into Fighter or rogue can do decently, since they're at an intersection of support for arcane, teleportation, energy subtypes (cold and radiant primarily), and weapons. Pretty one-note though (Teleport ->charge-> white lotus riposte ->repeat).
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Jul 5, 2015 18:37
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thespaceinvader posted:No, it's pretty terrible to invest in those Power Strike feats. There's not a single one that's worth bothering with. Prior to Epic you should be able to to prone someone every time you punish them thanks to World Serpent's Grasp, and your Power Strike will immobilise them anyway if you're using a hammer. Those feats are generally not worth the investment. It's not the superlative option for top of the CharOp, but I don't think it would be terrible on certain characters, especially those who don't qualify for Martial Cross-Training and thus will have three or four uses of Power Strike floating around by Paragon Tier. Hammer Strike sacrifices 1[w] from Power Strike's damage to daze the target until the end of your next turn. You're trading damage for control, which is a dubious decision for a striker, but not necessarily a terrible one for a defender provided your actual strikers are capable of capitalizing on things (especially if they're rogues or chargers). It generates CA for both melee and range, and shuts down some enemies who have dangerous or defensive OAs and immediates. You're also spending a feat in order to make this decision, so it is costing you. If you were to hypothetically take this feat at level 1 (not that I'm actually recommending doing that) it would be roughly analogous to taking Martial Cross-Training for something like Bell Ringer in a world where Bell Ringer didn't suck. Actually, since it's MBA triggered and thus can be used off-turn from your defender aura and on any ability score you can scare up, it's more like Martial Cross-Training into the bard's Lesser Flash of Distraction. Is it worth it? Well, a daze on an OA provoked by movement or shifting can potentially be a turn-ending move, especially once you add World Serpent's Grasp into the mix, but it's an option. At level 3 you get a second use of Power Strike per encounter, and a third at level 13 (plus one more at 11 if you go Stalwart Knight for your paragon path), so you have the ability to daze dudes off-turn several times per fight. Once you hit level 7 and pick up Staggering Hammer to immobilize, Hammer Strike means you can daze and immobilize a target as an OA/Immediate/granted attack, which makes it comparable to the Brawler's E13 Stranglehold power in terms of turn-ending lockdown potential, and you can do it several times per fight, and you can add in Hammer Shock as usual to increase the penalties. You're trading damage and a feat for a small pool of control which can be flexibly applied depending on the situation. If you almost never make off-turn attacks then this isn't worth it, but I'd certainly consider it on a non-Strength Knight (who'd wouldn't get much use out of Martial Cross-Training anyways) with a spare feat slot because I believe that the daze opens enough strategic options to justify the cost of a feat and 1[w] damage. Even then, I would still retire it at epic in favor of Overwhelming Impact but it's something to think about in mid-heroic to paragon. If Flail Strike was just "sacrifice 1[w] to prone the target" then I wouldn't really care, because as you said Flail Expertise/Dragging Flail/Lashing Flail already have that at-will without sacrificing damage (at paragon, anyways, getting sliding on your flail attacks in heroic takes a bit more work). The only reason I'd give this feat a second look is the line "if you do so, the target provokes an opportunity attack from you if it stands up adjacent to you during its next turn." So you're spending a feat to trade 1[W] damage for prone plus a chance at an off-turn MBA. On a slayer, scout or knight this could be nice, especially if you use that opportunity attack to knock your victim prone again in true Mortal Kombat fashion. The problem with this is that it's very DM-dependent, because if your target just decides "well, this is my life now, I'm just going to lie here" then you've traded a feat and 1[W] damage for a prone you could get elsewhere. It's still somewhat of a lockdown option for a flail knight in that case since you've increased the number of actions that can result in punishment but you probably have better options for your feat. Heavy Blade Strike could have some corner-case build uses for a heroic to maybe paragon slayer since it sacrifices power strike's damage for an MBA against a different target when you drop a dude, but unless you're swinging a glaive around it's going to be very map-dependent on having someone else to murder within reach after you murdered someone else and if you're strength based then you probably already have Rain of Blows or Bash and Pummel or something and thus don't have that many uses of Power Strike to actually make it worth the extra feat. It does let you double up on an enemy by bouncing off of minions if you have Cleave or something similar, but again that's map-dependent. Spear Strike lets you immobilize in exchange for 1[W], but World Serpent's Grasp fills a similar role at stopping most movement for a feat and that's at-will so it's not really worth it. I agree that the rest of the Power Strike feats are barely worth the effort of even mentioning, let alone actually taking. Mecha Gojira posted:Usually if I'm building a spike-chain character, I'm looking at a class that can multi-attack/use two weapons, so mainly Fighter, Ranger, and Barbarian. Since it's a multi-class feat, unfortunately the Rangers and Barbarians are out of the running for things like Dragging Flail since they can't pick up the Fighter support, so they'll need the Mark of Storm in order to click, and even then they'll only be able to choose between the slide or the prone. To get the full potential, you really have to be a fighter, but then you become a multi-attacking, multi-target slide-prone monster. Give it to a Minotaur with the Beastblooded PP, and you've got a multi-target, multi-attack monster with REACH 2 at level 16. Elemental Initiate theme gives an immediate action weapon attack with slide plus ki focus proficiency, allowing you to pick up an Abduction Ki focus and slide dudes on MBAs. Sadly it requires you to make attacks using the ki focus itself so you can't mix it up with weapon properties, but it'll serve until paragon.
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Jul 5, 2015 22:20
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thespaceinvader posted:Proning on an OA usually costs the enemy your turn, and dazing on an OA up to 3/enc is less useful than you think. And you can get most of that control by using a feat you should be taking anyway (World Serpent's Grasp) and a stance you should basically never be out of (Defend the Line) - if they provoke an OA or try to shift, you knock them prone next to you and cost them their move action, so now they make an attack at -4 or spend their standard standing up successfully, only to be knocked over again next turn anyway. If they proc punishment by attacking, you hit them, knock them over and now they're doing that at -4 too, and have to spend their move to stand up. Dazing is certainly better, and if you're swimming in feats might be worth considering, but I'm really unconvinced. I agree about WSG + Defend the Line being core and that Hammer Strike is the first thing to go at epic, but dazing does open a lot of options if you have the feats for it, especially since it tightens the punishment even harder when you need it. You can mess with elites and solos in various ways, or anything that has an immediate/opportunity/minor action ability that may or may not be an attack. Since knights use OAs to punish then they can actually punish a solo with multiple turns multiple times, and can do things like daze a solo, let it shed the daze as part of the solo feature and then potentially redaze it either on its turn with a punishment or through a granted attack. I think multiple avenues for dazing offers enough enough of a flexible tactical tool to make it worth some consideration by mid-heroic if you're not going Martial Cross-Training and already have enough feats to cover your essentials, plus it grants easy CA and melee repositioning for you and your allies and the like. It's by no means vital, it's just something to think about. If you don't think it's a good use of a feat, that's fine too. Flail Strike can be nice on a spiked chain Scout, because they're not as attached to their weapon choices and there's always the MC Spiked Chain option if you want to take advantage of the scout's bonus with light blades. It would lock you out of Dragging Flail from the fighter MC though, but you're still martial so you'll qualify for Lashing Flail at paragon. Thanks for the correction about the OA tripping though.
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Jul 5, 2015 23:19
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thespaceinvader posted:I love playing my slideproning Berserker for just that reason, he's great fun (unless he manages to get push out of reach, which is the pain of aura defenders). Brawlers have a similar problem when they get punted out of arm's reach, so I took notes on some of the gear that can help since there's not much that shows up in the guides: -Resolute armor (lvl 8+ Plate) reduces all forced movement by 1 square or by two squares if you have Mark of Warding. -Ring of Personal Gravity (lvl 16) reduces all forced movement by 1 square, comes with a potentially intriguing daily ability -Dwarfstride Boots (lvl 18) also reduce forced movement by 1 square -Mordin's Blessing of Iron (lvl 3+ boon) reduces push distance by 2 and lets you make an MBA as an OA if you get pulled adjacent, but doesn't do anything against slides. -Melora's Storm (lvl 3+) boon lets you shift one square as a free action after being subject to forced movement. Won't always help, but it's something. (Roll With It feat in paragon does the same thing) -Rune of Tide Inexonerable (lvl 17+) makes you immune to forced movement provided you somehow have a way to enter rune states or can come up with a way to share with someone who does (???) Then there's always being a dwarf, or rolling Dwarven Defender and simply laughing at any and all attempts to knock you away. There's also a few items that let you reduce or negate forced movement, but they tend to be encounter powers (Belt of Dwarvenkind) or daily powers. Not really a lot of options to defend yourself from repositioning in the lower levels though.
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Jul 6, 2015 05:00
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Everything post MM3 works (including the Monster Vault), but if it's from the MM1, MM2 or an issue of Dungeon or Dragon before the MM3 then you might have problems.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:16
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Almost everything in the MM1 was updated for the Monster Vault though, with the exception of the things that only show up in epic tier.
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Jul 16, 2015 18:23
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dwarf74 posted:Wow. Had my first mid-Paragon PC death in this campaign last night. AoE damage is a harsh mistress. What happened?
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Jul 16, 2015 22:12
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Agent Boogeyman posted:Reminds me of my favorite errata notes for a power I forget the name of now. It was a Wizard daily that let you teleport the target to any place you could "see". The errata changed it so now it had a range on the teleport with some developer commentary to the effect of "Now you cannot teleport the target to the distant crater of Mt. Lava" or something. I want to believe it was an actual thing that happened during a play session, in front of the editors, and they quickly realised their mistake and had the good enough humor to note it in the patch notes. That would probably be the errata for Space Vortex, a psion augmented at-will from the PHB3. WotC posted:Space Vortex There is the Cosmic Soul Epic Destiny that has the level 30 ability of "all of your ranged powers and area powers have a range of 'sight"" but I don't think it really works with this one (though you can pick up a target from far away and drop it within 10 squares). Any power that lets you teleport a target to a space within range would work though.
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Aug 1, 2015 17:43
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Honestly, I have no problems letting people assign a +2 to any three stats of their choice with any race (even humans) and get a +1 to three stats when you hit levels 4/8/14/18/24/28, because it lets you qualify for more things, use more features and stops the backsliding of your worst defense as you level. Similarly, in the case of characters whose stat pairs overlap on the same defense (Str/Con, Dex/Int, Wis/Cha), they can apply one of the stats to their other defenses.
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Aug 8, 2015 14:56
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There still are plenty of nice fighter paragon paths left for people to MC into like Shocktrooper or Kensei, even if the latter is a boring path for boring people, plus more defender-oriented PPs like Polearm Master. Plus there's all the sweet fighter feat support since the fighter is probably one of the most well-supported classes in the game. Its only rival in terms of sheer amount of stuff produced for the class is probably the wizard.
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Aug 8, 2015 20:39
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Choosing between Spiked Chain and Greatspear on a Polearm Master build is really hard. Polearm does have some more feats required for the set-up (especially if you want forced movement for Polearm Momentum), but on the other hand Polearm Gamble is really fun.
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Aug 8, 2015 21:02
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Half-elf or tiefling fake skalds can be fun, since War Chanter means your allies want to be within 5 squares of you at all times anyways, but you're still going to feel the range restrictions if someone needs healing and they're too far away. Similarly an eladrin fake skald can do the whole "I had to walk once and it was awful" routine, but it is ridiculously feat-intensive. And in both cases you're taking advantage of the fact that the bard has more options as a skald than pure skalds do.
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Aug 10, 2015 17:23
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Fortunately, the Bladesinger isn't a defender, it's a controller (unfortunately, it's got problems as a primary controller as well). The only defender you're missing other than the Battlemind is maybe the Berserker, which is some combination of knight-esque defender and barbarian striker, but it's far easier for it to switch gears from defender to striker than it is to go in reverse. Thanks to Poised Defender you can have excellent even at the low levels and while not using a shield. Since you're not tied to a secondary stat other than the fact that you use light armor, you can technically run an Intelligence-secondary berserker; not really the best choice since Dexterity boosts your initiative and more of your skills, but still there for the novelty. Points regarding the defenders already mentioned. -Fighters: Fighters have some of the best support in the game from feats to paragon paths, and it's not uncommon for other defenders to multiclass into fighter just to take advantage of their sweet stuff, especially stuff revolving around weapon types (such as polearms or hammers and shields). Fighters are pretty sticky thanks to Combat Superiority, which makes it so all of their OAs will actually flat-out stop an opponent from walking by, and while they can't do the same with Combat Challenge they can make an MBA if a marked target attempts to shift away. Since fighters specifically use MBAs for mark punishment, there's a lot of fun optimization tricks you can use that take advantage of all the various MBA boosters and weapon-styles, such as Lashing Flail to slide the target of your MBA, and Flail Expertise to prone anyone you slide, or things like Deft Blade/Impaling Spear to boost your accuracy on MBAs, or Pinning Challenge to immobilize any marked target you hit with an MBA. -Paladins: Paladin punishment is unique in that they're the only class whose native punishments take no action to use. Opponent makes an attack against an ally, opponent takes damage, no roll or action required, which means that paladins with the right abilities can sort of keep trucking even when they're dazed, stunned or dominated, while other defenders are all bound to their immediate actions, or their opportunity actions in the case of the knight/berserker/cavalier (which is better for defending because you can punish multiple foes per round). They have several powers that let them spread out marks en-masse that also require no action to enforce, which lets them lock down a crowd of enemies instead of playing mark chicken like immediate action defenders who multimark (where as soon as you've actually used your OA, the others can act with less fear). The no-action nature of their marks means that they're one of the best classes in the game for punishment stacking, letting them double up by throwing in an immediate or opportunity action attack on top of their normal punishment if an enemy violates their mark, either through various paladin encounter powers or through things like multiclassing into Fighter and picking up Polearm Master or something. If they really get going you can have situations where the paladin's mark will damage an opponent, halve the opponent's damage and heal the ally with no action required, allowing the paladin to then damage the opponent further with an immediate action attack. Paladins have very nice leader-secondary options as well; while they can't enable like a true leader can they can still pick up some of the slack for healing and save-granting to let the leader focus on buffing and enabling. -Cavaliers have the crummiest defender punishment (paladin-level damage, but requires an OA instead of no action/free action), but are also the only class in the game who can pick up a mount that scales in level with them. -Swordmage: Swordmages are unlike other defenders in that marking a dude and then wandering off to do your own thing on the field is a pretty valid strategy, because it forces the enemy to either attack your allies and eat your mark punishment or eat OAs from your allies and come to you or shoot at you. This means they can hybrid well with some other ranged classes like warlocks to create a tanky and damaging defender.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:31
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Dire Wombat posted:The class I'm really interested in is the Druid; they seem like total oddballs next to the other controllers. Druids are weird because they don't have nearly as many superb encounter and daily powers as wizards and invokers do outside of Charm Beast (which is an EoNT domination as encounter power... at level 7). One gimmick I've seen involves using Staggering Smash to push anyone you daze, and then MCing fighter for Polearm Momentum so you can prone them by using an Alfsair spear as an implement, which is some decent control options. Also, the lycanthrope themes count as beast form for the purpose of druid powers, so you can be a werewolf protector druid and still have the ability to use druid beast powers even though you don't have wild shape, and at level 10 you can enter hybrid form so you can use any and all of your powers and just never stop being a bearman in every fight.
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Aug 10, 2015 21:53
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ProfessorCirno posted:Gotta actually get to Epic first though, is the thing. Saying 'Paladins are AWESOME in the last ten levels of the game that few people reach" isn't a saving note, and to be frank, one of the bigger issues I've had with some of 4e mechanics talk is that a lot of people end up building for Epic, which may never come. Paladins also have some nice punishment stacking immediate actions starting in heroic as early as Avenging Smite (melee attack immediate that immobilizes) or Price of Cowardice (close burst implement attack that blinds). And the challenge/sanction damage can get better if you invest in things like the Symbol of the Champion's Code (lvl 8+ holy symbol that adds its bonus to your damage), radiant vulnerability (power of the sun, solar enemy, plus enhancements from Pelor's Sun Blessing) or roll a strength/cha build (and/or half-orc build). Vulnerability also means that punishment stacking becomes even more fun. And being dazed won't shut you down like it does other defenders. I do like the list of paladin powers and feats, there's plenty of good choices out there.
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Aug 11, 2015 00:19
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Could be worse, you could always be someone who wants to use acid damage.
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Aug 17, 2015 23:58
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While Expertise and Improved Defenses are highly recommended feats, you don't necessarily have to have take them at the first couple of levels because it's only a 5% boost to hit and to defenses in heroic tier, though generally speaking you probably want expertise sooner than improved defenses because if you don't hit your target, you don't do much. That said, there are some classes like the Brawler Fighter (which has a native +2 enhancement bonus to unarmed attacks at level 1) or the warpriest (which can have many powers where everything operates off of effects that come into play no matter what) where you can put it off a bit more (though you still want it before you hit level 11).
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Aug 19, 2015 16:51
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And like everyone else, wizards get even better when they have access to other books.
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Aug 24, 2015 21:08
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Stands for the power types you have access to: At-will, Encounter, Utility, Daily. Edit: Beaten soundly.
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Aug 24, 2015 23:30
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There was an Ecology of the Death Knight article in the run-up to 4e.
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Aug 26, 2015 23:27
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Companion classes aren't really up to the same tasks as regular classes- Defender companion marks on its MBA but has no actual form of mark enforcement while the striker's bonus damage is terrible. Leaders and controllers are a little better since more of their role comes from powers, but lacking dailies can hurt. For Zeitgeist stuff: As a player, not all themes are created equal. Docker has a good power, but its level 10 feature is mostly situational outside of maybe one gimmick build that might not actually even work Eschatologist is garbage from top to bottom: its power has terrible requirements, terrible restrictions and an underwhelming effect, while most of its features are largely gimmicky or useless save for the level 1 ability to fiat away a creature's death Gunsmith has great features to the point where it's probably a good idea to have one of them in the party if you want to use guns with a non-terrible load speed. I'm not sure why the power doesn't let you add your ability modifier to it Martial Scientist's bonus proficiencies are pretty drat nice on just about every character concept, and the powers can be pretty interesting (but since most of them are secret it's hard to tell what your character might be able to use). Skyseer is somewhat underwhelming since its power doesn't do all that much compared to most other fate-powers since it locks you into using the roll and basically just means that you'll know beforehand what you can do with the power, but it also means that it can lock out one of your abilities if you roll a 1 or something. Its level 10 feature is also underwhelming since by that point you can just buy a bag of holding and stuff every piece of mundane gear you might need into it. Spirit Medium has a nice enough power if you use it against the right opponent (and if you're not a striker or defender whose standard actions are required to do your job), and some nice features that can come in handy given the nature of the game. Technologist's features are all about boosting its power (plus the undefined feature of being able to better use whatever weird tech you run into), so if you want to make the most of the theme you need to do some thinking. It can have some interesting results on the right character, especially if you take the feat to boosts its HP to your bloodied value. Vekeshi Mystic has nice features, but its power scales weirdly, since it gives you up to six uses of it per encounter, but only once per round and it only triggers under certain circumstances, so later uses stop being relevant unless you either switch it to once per turn or halve the number of uses and then increase the damage. Yerasol Veteran also has good features, but the power needs some tweaking since it's a standard action leader-ish ability that doesn't let anyone attack, making it more of an emergency button akin to second wind or making a heal check on an ally. The divide gets even sharper when you get into paragon paths Applied Astronomer has some interesting features if you randomly rolled the ones you wanted. Damage on the powers doesn't include your ability modifiers though for some reason. Logos has some great options in its features and powers, and can really do well. Eschatologist might be a garbage theme, but this is probably the easiest path for theme outsiders to qualify for. Mad Shootist has some good features and interesting combinations if you have the right single target ranged weapon attacks. Only letdown is its underwhelming daily (unless the attack is a minor action attack). Monument of War's abilities range from actively bad to merely "meh", with powers that involve shooting yourself in the face for mediocre damage. A bad case of adherence to flavor hamstringing the mechanics. An attack negation daily utility is probably the best feature here. Notorious Celebrity is definitely a gimmick path whose value increases if you have some way to take advantage of having minion chaff on the field, such as mass enabling to take advantage of the extra bodies on the field and mass marking/punishment so they're not just being chewed up (admittedly, it's better them than you) and prompt you to waste your surges on them. A really nice encounter power that lets you use other powers as an immediate interrupt when someone hits you or an ally, giving you lots of opportunities. Level 16 feature is pretty conditional though and kind of weak. An interesting path for something like a paladin. Polyhistor boosts basic attacks, which means it's interesting on classes whose basic attacks are common, such as fighters (who use them to punish) or many essentials classes like knights, hunters, hexblades, scouts, thieves, or slayers (who probably have better options). The more you use and boost basic attacks, the more you'll get out of it. Depending on the stance you can get some interesting options going, such as immediate reaction attacks to enemies who get too close or letting you inflict serious conditions on grabbed enemies. Very interesting on a knight or brawler fighter. Steamsuit Pilot is a path with a great idea that ultimately fails to deliver. The core feature is something that's basically plate armor, but without penalties to movement and some checks, plus some options for stuff like speed/carrying capacity boosts. The big problem is that the suit doesn't like you- every time you take damage (attacks, ongoing, zones) you have to make a saving throw; fail three of those throws and you take a -2 penalty to attacks and checks until you take a short rest. This can penalize you pretty quickly, and if you're the kind of character who gets through most fights without actually being attacked or taking damage... why do you need power armor? The AP feature could be boosted to Resist 10 all instead of 5 all without problem, and the level 16 feature is more of a novelty feature that lets you pack up your suit Tony Stark-style but it takes a standard action to put it back on and turn it on, so you can't get much out of it in combat. The powers all have drawbacks to using them- the encounter weakens you (save ends), the utility immobilizes you (save ends) and the daily does 10 fire damage to you each round (which you'd have to roll suit saves against if you're not resistant) and can deactivate your suit until you spend a standard action to make a saving throw to start it back up. None of these powers are really great enough to justify their downsides outside of a Hero's Poise paladin gimmick. For such a cool idea it's just a huge pain in the rear end that's designed to gently caress you up because the designers once again let flavor hamstring mechanics. Urban Empath is also garbage, since you lose all your features whenever you leave an urban environment. The upside to this is that it defines an urban environment as a contained area with a population density of at least 1000 people per square mile, which is only about 1 person per 28,000 square feet (about 2/3rds of an acre), so if you're sitting in a wagon or a cave you're in an urban environment. If your DM doesn't reduce fractions then you lose your features and your powers go to garbage pretty quickly, with your encounter power becoming no better than a basic AoE at-will. Vekeshi Excoriant has some interesting features and powers, including an AP feature that lets you occupy three different spaces at once until the start of your next turn, which can be pretty nice on a knight or something. The encounter power can murder all minions on the map instantly and the daily is a summon with a radiant multiattack so you can really do some damage in the right party. An interesting enough path. LightWarden fucked around with this message at 20:27 on Sep 16, 2015 |
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Sep 16, 2015 17:45
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dwarf74 posted:If you guys want any of the WotC 4e charop guides, better act fast. Wow, that's terrible. Some of it can probably be scraped with Internet Archive or something similar.
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Sep 16, 2015 17:51
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Yeah, the Celebrity's E11 is a great power, and I thought I had mentioned that in my write-up, but looks like I didn't. I am surprised that someone likes mass marking opponents out of reach enough that they're willing to blow themselves up to do it (less risky if you have evasion and cover, but you can still hit yourself on a 20). Especially on a fighter, because using Yerasol Veteran's theme power means you're not attacking that turn and thus can't mark targets unless you've got a move or minor that will do it for you.
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Sep 16, 2015 18:14
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Some stuff has been moved to ENWorld, but it's never too early to move more.
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Sep 24, 2015 15:34
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And if you're going to move stuff, someone built a conversion tool to make it less painful.
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Sep 24, 2015 16:10
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Well, it could go a bunch of different ways depending on luck and such, but if party members are hitting the floor then the controllers and defenders may need to think about what they've done. If they're staying on the floor then the leaders may need to think about what they've done.
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Oct 6, 2015 21:04
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Not exactly. Dungeon Survival Guide published the rules for kobolds, goblins and svirfneblin (deep gnomes), revenants showed up in Heroes of Shadow, and shadar-kai showed up in Dragon Annual 2009, which leaves the revisions for bladelings, gnolls, hengeyokai, and kenku in the magazines along with the tinker gnome and draconian articles.
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Oct 10, 2015 20:20
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Which puts them in a small exclusive club along with orcs, bugbears and bullywugs  .I'm also totally surprised that someone did a Dragon Magazine update for bladelings.
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Oct 11, 2015 01:07
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Also Iron Soul Monks. But yeah, that's three sub-builds in the whole game.
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Oct 11, 2015 04:57
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gradenko_2000 posted:Unrelated question: what was the first issue of Dragon Magazine that was 4e-related? 363 was the last one Paizo made, 364 was when it switched over to WotC and 4e.
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Oct 21, 2015 19:07
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24 hours left on the Wizards of the Coast Forums, so make sure you have everything you want.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:32
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Most of the CharOp guides have been transferred over to ENWorld, save for the Hexblade guide which no one particularly cares enough to save. A bunch of the 3e stuff got ported over to Giant in the Playground forums.
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Oct 28, 2015 17:46
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Level 8+ warpriests have a daily resurrection ability, which is nice, especially if you're rolling an Oghma Warpriest for their increasingly solid abilities as you level (their worst feature is their level 27 encounter power, since it's their level 13 encounter power with one extra [w] of damage, which is a bit underwhelming. But hey, reserve maneuver into Valorous Charge and become the king you were always meant to be).
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Oct 29, 2015 20:06
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| # ¿ May 16, 2024 03:05 |
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Looks like the WotC forum shutdown has been delayed for one week.
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Oct 30, 2015 01:24
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