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Author Topic: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?  (Read 25917 times)

Surgoshan

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #50 on: 05 Sep 2008, 20:28 »

Yeah, it's pretty ridiculous how many build options you have with the core classes with none of them being broken or shit.

They were really, really careful, I think.  I believe they spent the last two years balancing 4e.  Depending on what you're going for, a sword'n'boarder is just as valid a build as a two-hander.  This is partly because many people misunderstand the fighter's purpose; he's no longer a meat-grinder.  The fighter is now meant to be a lock-down.  He forces foes to stop and deal with him, literally; he can end movement, and a lot of his powers hamper movement.  He doesn't deal damage (that's for warlocks, rogues, and rangers), but he can soak up punishment and turn a portion of the battlefield into a glue-pit.
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Dimmukane

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #51 on: 05 Sep 2008, 20:39 »

Yeah, my ranger is pretty much a berserker with a scimitar and a flail.
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #52 on: 05 Sep 2008, 20:50 »

That was already a major way for people to play fighters, though people that could make themselves larger by magic could do it at lower levels. It is nice that they made that a bit more obvious, though, and possible to do with any weapon.
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Alex C

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #53 on: 05 Sep 2008, 22:22 »

Not that a fighter's damage should be underestimated, of course. My four man group is playing at level 12, and the human fighter in our group's favorite little trick right now is to use his "Come and Get It!" encounter power, spend an action point and then follow that up with his "Thicket of Blades" daily power. Since he uses a flail, the end result is that he makes everything in a Burst 3 zone around him come 2 steps closer to him and anything that ends adjacent to him is subject to a 2d6+7 attack followed by a Reliable 6d6+7 attack that slows anyone it hits. That's pretty respectable, especially when you consider he's not exactly really sacrificing much if any crowd control to pull it off. Things either have to deal with him after that or get reamed by his attacks of opportunity trying to get away.

[EDIT] No wait, actually, he's got a 5 strength bonus but his flail is a +2 magic weapon. so i guess it'd be a 3(2d6+2) damage code with the 5 strengthbonus tacked on at the end. Remembering this shit is why I'm the wizard. Screw weapons. All I know is the damage he didn with those two moves wasn't far off from what my wizard can do. Although, of course, I do it from a safer distance and more often.
« Last Edit: 05 Sep 2008, 22:39 by Whipstitch »
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #54 on: 05 Sep 2008, 23:44 »

Thicket of blades do the same thing as 3.5? In 3.5, it was a stance (book of 9 swords) that let you make an AoO off of 5-foot steps (now called shifting). Pretty mean, especially when you use a large-sized reach weapon (with powerful build) and something to make you go up one size (two if you are a high enough level psychic warrior). You get knockdown, which allows you to make an automatic trip attempt every time you do 10 or more damage, a +8 to trip from size (+12 if you go up two sizes from expansion), +4 from improved trip, and a big strength bonus, along with any magical items you might have. Oh, and you could make a strong case that with improved trip, after you make a successful trip attempt from knockdown, you get a free attack on the now-prone opponent. So you make your AoO, do at least 10 damage, trip them, and hit them again. And you can do this to anyone within 15 or 20 feet, not sure on that part. (short haft allows you to use a reach weapon inside its normal range, or you can use a gauntlet, which I don't think counts as TWF as long as you aren't attacking with both of them in the same action)

Course, if you are fighting a gargantuan centipede, you are SOL.
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Surgoshan

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #55 on: 06 Sep 2008, 05:51 »

Yeah... there isn't anything like that in 4e.  No more chain-wielding trip-monkeys who put together weapons and feats in order to do one thing over and over and over so that the DM has no choice but to either let them break combat or throw an enemy against them that can't be, say, tripped  or knocked down (gargantuan centipede) which completely nullifies them by being immune to the one, and only one, thing they do.
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Alex C

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #56 on: 06 Sep 2008, 09:25 »

Yep, you don't need to do anything special feat wise to lay the hurt on people or worry about being rendered a one trick pony so much anymore. These days thicket of blades is a 3[W] plus strength bonus damage attack to adjacent creatures that slows anything it hits until they make a saving throw, which is good but hardly mindblowing. Fighters are better at attacks of opportunity than the other classes in 4e, but it's largely a standard feature of the class that can't really be cheesed all that much.
« Last Edit: 06 Sep 2008, 09:28 by Whipstitch »
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ackblom12

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #57 on: 06 Sep 2008, 11:53 »

Thicket of blades do the same thing as 3.5? In 3.5, it was a stance (book of 9 swords) that let you make an AoO off of 5-foot steps (now called shifting). Pretty mean, especially when you use a large-sized reach weapon (with powerful build) and something to make you go up one size (two if you are a high enough level psychic warrior). You get knockdown, which allows you to make an automatic trip attempt every time you do 10 or more damage, a +8 to trip from size (I have nothing of value to add.2 if you go up two sizes from expansion), +4 from improved trip, and a big strength bonus, along with any magical items you might have. Oh, and you could make a strong case that with improved trip, after you make a successful trip attempt from knockdown, you get a free attack on the now-prone opponent. So you make your AoO, do at least 10 damage, trip them, and hit them again. And you can do this to anyone within 15 or 20 feet, not sure on that part. (short haft allows you to use a reach weapon inside its normal range, or you can use a gauntlet, which I don't think counts as TWF as long as you aren't attacking with both of them in the same action)

Course, if you are fighting a gargantuan centipede, you are SOL.

See this?

This is why I'm never touching 3rd Ed again.
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #58 on: 06 Sep 2008, 15:48 »

You do realize that that is just a basic attempt at making a fighter more than a waste of space, right? An archer type can sit back a few hundred feet away and pelt him with ten or twelve arrows in a round, a wizard can blind him, since he has shitty will saves, which means he has no idea when or where to swing, and even if he does, he gets a 50% miss chance, and a cleric... well, I guess clerics are really either not all that good, or godlike (DMM:Persist lets you put a lot of buffs on for 24 hours). Though they do have storm of vengeance.
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ackblom12

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #59 on: 06 Sep 2008, 16:06 »

What you just said? Supporting my choice to never touch 3rd Ed again.
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #60 on: 06 Sep 2008, 16:32 »

What, characters too complicated for you? I guess I can understand the appeal of 4E, but I really also like having so many sources to make a character from. For instance, D20 modern has very few source books, characters are pretty easy to make, the biggest part is figuring out what to buy, how mastercrafted to make it, any enchantments (if playing with FX), but in D&D, you have a lot more stuff to consider, so when you find a build that you like, you have the feeling that you made something nobody else did, even if someone else has likely made a build with all the same classes, because you put so much thought into it, doing it all yourself.
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ackblom12

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #61 on: 06 Sep 2008, 18:20 »

No, I played and enjoyed number crunching for quite a while in 3rd ed, but it was also shitty as hell that certain classes actually WERE completely useless unless you broke the game and multiclassed your way to godhood. It was especially a problem if someone in the group wasn't as good at making characters or was more about flavor than powergaming or numbercrunching and basically got screwedf or not knowing how to abuse the system.

The game was broken beyond belief.

Hence why outside of flavor books, 3rd Ed will never be touched by me again.

Edit: There's also something to be said about the fact that WotC put in practically useless feats such as toughness in the books with the intent of them being terrible feats. Personally I found it irritating that I was apparently paying them to make purposefully shitty feats, powers and classes to penalize people who were not as familiar with the game and make people who did know the game wonder why the hell they wasted the space with them.
« Last Edit: 06 Sep 2008, 18:26 by ackblom12 »
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #62 on: 06 Sep 2008, 18:29 »

What, didn't all of you agree what amount of optimization to use? Granted, there are some shitty classes, but that should be taken for granted, nobody can balance perfectly. Fighter did need help, though. There were a few ways you could use fighter 20 to be awesome (archer works, lots and lots of feats, lots and lots of iteratives), but for the most part, it was underpowered. Most classes had to multiclass for highest potential, druid is the only exception I can think of off the top of my head. And artificer.

Basically, it could be broken (pun-pun, anyone?) but it was only as broken as the DM and the players let it be.
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Alex C

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #63 on: 06 Sep 2008, 19:06 »

Yes, but the optimization discussion is something I could gleefully do without though. I really just don't see a bonus in having characters of the same level with such widely varying capabilities. Some guys just want to play the game and approach things as collaborative problem solving with some wisecracks and snack foods thrown in. Some guys just want to play a role and approach things as performance. As a former GM I always found it easier to appease both groups when I kept their relative capabilities in line. Plus, I generally dislike metagaming against my players, and some of the more min-maxed builds basically beg for the silver bullets to be pulled out lest I lose the attention of the rest of the party.
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Surgoshan

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #64 on: 06 Sep 2008, 19:20 »

First time I DMed in college I made the mistake of letting a munchkin do his thing.  He made a totally broken fighter build whereas everyone else just wanted to play for fun.  Since they never got to do anything... it wasn't fun. 
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Dimmukane

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #65 on: 06 Sep 2008, 21:37 »

I played tonight, I had a good time.  Like I said, I'm a ranger with a scimitar and a flail.  I used Thundertusk Boar Strike and knocked a gravehound 4 squares back, across a trench.  That same hound managed to take me to -1.  The fighter marked the other hound and managed to stop it from finishing me by interrupting, then stood over me to fend off both.  I managed to heal by next round, and we won the fight. 

I just want to say that 3/3.5 never made me feel like teamwork was as important as it felt in this instance.  I really do think they've improved group dynamics.
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Nodaisho

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #66 on: 06 Sep 2008, 21:43 »

Is marking similar to aid another in 3.x?
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Surgoshan

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Re: 4th edition D&D=Teh sckuk OR awesomesauce?
« Reply #67 on: 06 Sep 2008, 21:59 »

Nope.  When a fighter marks a foe, that foe gains a penalty to attack anyone other than that fighter.  An individual can only have one mark at a time.

A more thorough explanation.
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