D&D 4th Edition RulesAsk questions about 4th-Edition rules and the like in here. General discussion about 4E or any other game belongs in General RPG Discussion, above.
It's coming up on a year since we started playing 4e, and I've been leading four intrepid adventurers through the chaos that is Thunderspire Labyrinth (which, if you've played it, contains far more labyrinths than it does thunder or spires). While there have been a lot of great improvements to the game in 4e, there have been some drawbacks as well. For us in particular, we've got two major hurdles we're trying to overcome.
Firstly, as you already know, three out of the four PCs are strikers. The rundown is ranger, ranger, rogue, fighter. And as you might imagine, their per-round damage output is nothing short of phenomenal. Essentially the fighter ties up the big monsters with marks, and the strikers take care of the rest. Things regain a semblance of balance when the encounter includes monsters that aren't easily moved or monsters with heavy-hitting ranged attacks, but about 75% of the encounters so far in Thunderspire have been bloodlettings.
Over the last few sessions, I've tried some tricks to bring things back into line. I've begun using Stealth checks more frequently (which a surprising number of monsters in Thunderspire are trained in) to regain some maneuverability, and in some cases I've completely ignored the fighter to go after the softer targets.
The other difficulty is that each combat takes about an hour. Having consulted with other groups, it seems that's how 4e is designed. For our party, however, we're trying to get it down to about 30 minutes per combat.
One house rule I've tried is halving the monsters' hit points and doubling their damage. It works well for the most part, as most of the supporting monsters end up being more useful, and the stronger ones can actually begin to force healing surges and daily powers from the PCs. It's not perfect - sometimes it's difficult to determine whether it would unbalance a given encounter. On a few occassions I've had to nix it, for example if it would reduce an important NPC enemy to 40 hp or somesuch.
And that's about it...I'm hoping someone out there might be able to shed some light on this. At the very least, we're coming to the close of Thunderspire soon. I've suggested to my players that it might be a good time to think about new characters, hopefully with new classes. Thanks in advance for everyone's advice, at this point I'm willing to give anything a shot!
To challenge this group, I recommend Minions. Hordes of minions. Drop 30 figures on the board. On round 2, have one of them bolt out the door hollering for reinforcements, and on round 5 bring in 2 elite artillery with minions in front of them.
Until right before Paragon, our party was 3 strikers + leader (ranger, rogue, warlock, cleric). The only time we were usually really challenged was when we "aggro'd" too much stuff at once. We each got a few minion-clearing powers(cleric dragonbreath + their encounter blast 3, rogue daily blind blast 3, ranger twin-strike, warlock hunger of hadar daily 3x3 sustain) so minions didn't trouble us much either.
With that group, sounds like they're mostly melee, so the fairly standard 2-3 soldiers/brutes in melee with 2-3 artillery/controllers in front seems like it'd do the trick, especially if the ranged enemies have obstacles in the way (higher up, difficult terrain, traps, etc) to make it a gamble to try to get them first.
__________________ Robots, assassins, hobgoblins, the Ashen Tower, polite beholders, land pirates, gnome genocide, the Corpse Ramp, artifacts, exploding zombie dragons, flying islands, dying heroes, blood feuds, vanished races, the Black City: Rise of Felskein.
Just a small (deadly) tip ... send them swarms! Two should be more then enough to get them into big troubles, without a controller they are damn hard to kill and attack everyone around them for free .. also the fighter cannot stop them from moving around.
For making combat go faster on my PBP games, I've gone with 75% hit points/133% damage, and have been very pleased with the results. That 133% damage is on top of tweaking monster damage to better match the guidelines in the DMG.
30 minute combats might be hard to achieve on a consistent basis, though. Assuming a 6 round battle, that is 5 minutes per round...1 minute per PC and 1 minute for the DM. The PCs might be able to take their actions in a minute, probably less, but the DM is often going to take much longer. Consider, on your end, how you can streamline the actions of the monsters, as you will often be running as many or more creatures than the PCs.
What kinds of monsters are you running up against? 3 Strikers are going to be able to burn through any encounter that is primarily made up of Soldier and Brute type monsters. The game I am playing in had several strikers as well a 5 player group with a Rogue, Warlock, Ranger, Warlord, and a Paladin. Granted, it was rare for all players to show up, but the strikers were able to burn through some fairly heavy opponents, particularly encounters built around Solo's and Elites.
However, we could still run into problems when we faced down properly used artillery controllers, and depending on how they were used, Skirmishers. Rather then screwing around with the HP and damage output, have you tried building encounters around anything other than toe to toe? Going after the squishy targets is good, but to make it work you want to use Artillery (ie, ranged attacks), or Skirmishers (better mobility due to shifting actions). Also instead of trying to challenge through using monsters at a higher XP value, you may as well modify them downward in level to build up the numbers while keeping roughly the same XP value for the encounter. This does get you some of the value for lowering the HP, and you should be able to make up for the weaker attack value through bulk.
In addition, Minions are one of the best ways to deal with overwhelming damage. A Ranger using Twin Strike will still speed things along though, especially if it is built around archery rather than melee. If you can put minions between your Artillery / controller and your melee strikers, while having some skirmisher types go around, you may do better then you expect. If you have Artillery and a means of inflicting the Slowed condition, you can probably make things very dangerous for your players.
Of course all that assumes that you were using Brute / Soldier type monsters to try to go after the squishy targets.
I also strongly suggest that as the DM, you do what you can to take the long view for the encounters, and plan on making things difficult over a series of encounters rather than a single encounters. Your group is on paper at least a glass cannon; All output with not much ability to stand up if you start landing enough solid hits. Who cares if they can race through the first 4 encounters if the 5th one leaves them short of healing surges? Start finding a way to force just one more encounter (even if it is an easy one) before letting them take a full rest.
My group has three strikers, too. It's great. Not a hint of combat grind, even on solo monsters.
__________________ - Piratecat, EN World Admin
Currently editing the 4e War of the Burning Sky adventure path. Support EN Publishing, get excellent modules!
My group has three strikers, two leaders, and a defender. They tear through just about everything.
To keep things interesting, I have intelligent monsters avoid the fighter as much as possible, and focus fire on one of the "squishies." They know the fighter will lock them down, so they avoid it. In the last adventuring day, this tactic ended up with the ranger and the rogue both having zero healing surges by the time they got to the climactic encounter, which upped the tension nicely.
I've got Fighter, Paladin, Ranger, Rogue, Warlock, Bard, Wizard in my current group, now that the Warlord has left. They're an awesome group to watch in action, given that nearly all of them have striker-esque powers (the Fighter is two-handed, the Paladin is an Eladrin, etc).
My solution is not to worry about it, and to sometimes use reinforcements. They're just about to enter the Horned Hold in Thunderspire, so with some judicious use of reinforcements I think I can suprise them a bit.
__________________ DM of Adventure Path Story Hour (now in Thunderspire Labyrinth!): Ryam Plays Dice - updated 8th June 09 (campaign on indefinite hiatus).
Player in Swordlands Story Hour: Interview with a Fey - updated 15th June 09. News just in - this campaign may be restarting in the near future! Watch this space!
I also have the singular honour of being Rouseketeer #20.
The more I play 4e, the more apparent it becomes that strikers are the best classes in the game, and all other classes are largely unnecessary and only a playstyle choice. Hear me out.
Strikers are, for the most part, as durable as any defender class. They have equal defenses, and although they have less HP, they have tons of immediate interrupt escapes, teleports, free movement, all kinds of ways to get out of harm's way. The presence of a defender makes the defender necessary; it deals less damage, so monsters are around for a longer amount of time, making their marking abilities necessary.
Leaders, with their massive healing and buffing, deal very little in the way of damage. A striker in their place can inflict many times as much damage. This makes healing largely unnecessary, because your enemies are going down so much faster. Leaders make themselves necessary by reducing damage output and increasing the length of the fight. Longer fights = more hits on the party = more healing needed.
Controllers are bad news. They necessitate themselves by spreading lower damage output among multiple targets. They have to hit multiple targets multiple times in order to play their role. If a situation arises where a controller can't hit multiple targets multiple times (which is absolutely FREQUENT in any games I've played) they are equal to roughly 3/4 of a leader or defender, which are already less efficient than just having a striker.
(On a side note: has anyone noticed that a cleric's spells are 5x better at nailing multiple targets than an actual controller? You never hurt your friends, and you usually heal and/or buff them to boot. WTF?)
It's really kind of genius, the way they made classes necessitate themselves. However, if you want a fast combat, you need all strikers. This isn't like 3e, where a party of rogues and sorcerers would get creamed in the first round. Ranger, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and avenger would pretty much ruin any encounter that came up in 4e.
This isn't like 3e, where a party of rogues and sorcerers would get creamed in the first round.
I'd have to disagree, a party of sorcerers and rogues would cream the enemies in the first round.
All classes in 3E were strikers, with the exception of the bard. Poor bard. Clerics were so much strikers that you had to intentionally not be so much of a striker so that the non-casters could get a kill once in a while.
The more I play 4e, the more apparent it becomes that strikers are the best classes in the game, and all other classes are largely unnecessary and only a playstyle choice. Hear me out.
Strikers are, for the most part, as durable as any defender class. They have equal defenses, and although they have less HP, they have tons of immediate interrupt escapes, teleports, free movement, all kinds of ways to get out of harm's way. The presence of a defender makes the defender necessary; it deals less damage, so monsters are around for a longer amount of time, making their marking abilities necessary.
Leaders, with their massive healing and buffing, deal very little in the way of damage. A striker in their place can inflict many times as much damage. This makes healing largely unnecessary, because your enemies are going down so much faster. Leaders make themselves necessary by reducing damage output and increasing the length of the fight. Longer fights = more hits on the party = more healing needed.
Controllers are bad news. They necessitate themselves by spreading lower damage output among multiple targets. They have to hit multiple targets multiple times in order to play their role. If a situation arises where a controller can't hit multiple targets multiple times (which is absolutely FREQUENT in any games I've played) they are equal to roughly 3/4 of a leader or defender, which are already less efficient than just having a striker.
(On a side note: has anyone noticed that a cleric's spells are 5x better at nailing multiple targets than an actual controller? You never hurt your friends, and you usually heal and/or buff them to boot. WTF?)
It's really kind of genius, the way they made classes necessitate themselves. However, if you want a fast combat, you need all strikers. This isn't like 3e, where a party of rogues and sorcerers would get creamed in the first round. Ranger, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and avenger would pretty much ruin any encounter that came up in 4e.
I think you might be right about an all-striker party being better than a mixed party. I am not sure though.
My current party has a Dwarven Battlevigor Fighter and he can soak a LOT of damage.
Your criticism of the controllers isn't quite up to date btw. The Invoker can always hit 2+ targets if there are 2+ enemies. He is partially broken due to this, and regularily does more damage than the strikers. (I have a party with 3 strikers, 1 defender, 1 leader, 1 controller).
I do agree fully that you only need one each of the defender/leader/controller though. The rest of the party should be strikers.
The problem I have in my party is that we have a player with a Barbarian, and he hasn't rolled less than three 20's per session for the lasts 5 sessions. A barbarian that crits goes on a rampage, and then downs something and get another attack and... yeah he does stupendous damage.
(And yeah, he has a high-crit weapon and he is a half-orc so he usually adds the extra [W] damage when he crits, so his "regular" charge does 1d12+1d6+6 damage, but when he crits its 2d12+1d6+6+1d6 = 36+1d6 damage.)
Last session he critted on his daily (I had slowed him to uselessness for 2 rounds, so I guess it was payback time.) He did something like 70 damage in one hit. Then he got a free attack, used an action point and my elite with 180+ hp went from unhurt to bloodied.
The barbarian btw, must be the most fun class to play in the game. If you crit, kill something or get bloodied something fun happens. And you always zip around the battlefield charging as some manic. It is the best incarnation of the barbarian I have seen since I started playing AD&D a long time ago.
A last comment: I haven't had a single problem with combat dragging on in my game. Combat usually lasts for 4-5 rounds if I am not being really nasty (level 4+ encounters), which is 2+ rounds more than in 3.5. At the same time each round goes really quickly and the fights goes back and forth a bit before the PC's win.
Oh, I threw a nasty encounter at them, that gave them pause:
2x Ghouls
4x Corruption corpses.
The ghouls stopped the barbarian while the corruption corpses kept the ranger from doing anything fun, because he was weakened all the time. After they killed the ghouls the rest of the encounter was easy. (they were level 4)
The more I play 4e, the more apparent it becomes that strikers are the best classes in the game, and all other classes are largely unnecessary and only a playstyle choice. Hear me out.
Strikers are, for the most part, as durable as any defender class. They have equal defenses, and although they have less HP, they have tons of immediate interrupt escapes, teleports, free movement, all kinds of ways to get out of harm's way. The presence of a defender makes the defender necessary; it deals less damage, so monsters are around for a longer amount of time, making their marking abilities necessary.
Leaders, with their massive healing and buffing, deal very little in the way of damage. A striker in their place can inflict many times as much damage. This makes healing largely unnecessary, because your enemies are going down so much faster. Leaders make themselves necessary by reducing damage output and increasing the length of the fight. Longer fights = more hits on the party = more healing needed.
Controllers are bad news. They necessitate themselves by spreading lower damage output among multiple targets. They have to hit multiple targets multiple times in order to play their role. If a situation arises where a controller can't hit multiple targets multiple times (which is absolutely FREQUENT in any games I've played) they are equal to roughly 3/4 of a leader or defender, which are already less efficient than just having a striker.
(On a side note: has anyone noticed that a cleric's spells are 5x better at nailing multiple targets than an actual controller? You never hurt your friends, and you usually heal and/or buff them to boot. WTF?)
It's really kind of genius, the way they made classes necessitate themselves. However, if you want a fast combat, you need all strikers. This isn't like 3e, where a party of rogues and sorcerers would get creamed in the first round. Ranger, ranger, rogue, sorcerer, and avenger would pretty much ruin any encounter that came up in 4e.
Eh. While I'm not sure how a somewhat mixed party of strikers would work (say... a melee ranger, a charisma rogue, a warlock, and a sorcerer), in my experience strikers are as they should be: glass cannons.
Our rogue can deal really sick amounts of damage, but he's gone down more times than the defender or any other character, cause any amount of focus fire will knock him below 0 in 1-2 rounds. The fighter, on the other hand, with both higher AC and more HP (not to mention his utilities) can take that and more, and he's the least optimized character in the party. Yeah, a group of strikers would guarantee you a high damage output, but once you knock a guy below zero, good luck at getting him back on his feet.
I'd have to disagree, a party of sorcerers and rogues would cream the enemies in the first round if they won initiative.
I fixed that for you.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Blackbrrd
I think you might be right about an all-striker party being better than a mixed party. I am not sure though.
...
Your criticism of the controllers isn't quite up to date btw. The Invoker can always hit 2+ targets if there are 2+ enemies. He is partially broken due to this, and regularily does more damage than the strikers. (I have a party with 3 strikers, 1 defender, 1 leader, 1 controller).
I do agree fully that you only need one each of the defender/leader/controller though. The rest of the party should be strikers.
...
I'm surprised I actually got support on this point. =P
On the invoker, are you talking about Divine Bolts? How the HECK does Divine Bolts deal more damage than a striker? That's absurd. Level 5...2d6 + 14 is still less than 2d10 + 4 + 1d8 or 1d4 + 2d8 + 10...and the striker can still put it all on one target. If anything, I'd say the Invoker is an example of what the wizard shoulda coulda woulda.
If you're not talking about Divine Bolts, I think I misread the class or something...they still suffer the same limitations as the wizard with "you wind up hitting your own guys a lot". Wizards have a feat tax to get around stuff the Cleric gets around for free, with twinkies.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Lord Ernie
Eh. While I'm not sure how a somewhat mixed party of strikers would work (say... a melee ranger, a charisma rogue, a warlock, and a sorcerer), in my experience strikers are as they should be: glass cannons.
Glass cannons with the same or better defense values as defenders.
Just whipping out my party's level 8 sheets...
Ranger: A 23, F 19, R 23, W 21; Total Values 86
Paladin: A 25, F 22, R 17, W 20; Total Values 84
Warlock: A 22, F 17, R 21, W 23; Total Values 83
All 3 of these characters each have +2 armor and +2 neck slot items. As you can see, their defenses are nearly identical. I'll concede that if the paladin carried a heavy shield, his defenses would look a bit bigger (an extra 4 total defense points, specifically)...but if he was carrying a shield, he wouldn't be smacking people upside the head with 8d6 (brutal 1) mordenkrad damage on that level 5 daily. He's nearly a striker with his damage output, but trades that last bit of damage for piles of healing; which, he would arguably not need if he were hitting as hard as a striker.
My point is that if you build a full tank, you lose a lot of damage output for not a lot of defensive gain. Yeah, the tank protects the strikers...but if he was a striker himself, the bad guys would go down faster, thus eliminating the need for him to be there in the first place.
My OTHER point is that strikers get TRUCK LOADS of ways to GTFO. The ranger, holy hell.
DM: This orc charges you.
Ranger: Oh, really? I shift 4 squares away from him before he attacks.
Next round DM: Ok, this other orc gives you the evil eye from across the glade.
Ranger: No way, I shoot him for 20 damage. He misses.
DM: It's not even your turn...
Ranger: I know, I can only use it when its not my turn. lol
And the warlock just teleports wherever he wants, nobody can threaten him for long. Strikers have great defenses and, if played right, are barely able to be engaged, much less seriously threatened. Unless you're talking Avengers...then instead of 3 ways to just GTFO, you have even higher defenses, and more HP and surges, with ways to spend them in combat.
Ranger: A 23, F 19, R 23, W 21; Total Values 86
Paladin: A 25, F 22, R 17, W 20; Total Values 84
Warlock: A 22, F 17, R 21, W 23; Total Values 83
With a decent Defender, it looks more like:
Ranger: A 25, F 21, R 25, W 23; Total Values 92
Paladin: A 25, F 22, R 17, W20, Total Values 84
Warlock: A 24, F19, R 23, W25; Total Values 89
The mark makes a big difference.
(Of course, my Defender would probably be a Fighter with AC 29. At least that's what my 8th Fighter had at the time. But I wield only a pathetic Longsword. )
But all these are just paper tigers. Try it in game and tell me how it works out.
Thoughts of the Arch Chancellor - My weblog on EN World - containing game related material, like: house rules, design theories, reviews, play reports, adventure ideas
Secret Member of <Think we would just hide our secret with a spoiler tag, eh?>
This is the sort of tradeoff I'm speaking of. Fighter increases everyone else's defenses by 2 against anything he's marked; but he deals less damage than a striker, prolonging the fight, increasing overall damage taken by the party in total, and begs the question for a leader to be present, further widening the "fast killing" gap.
I have been thinking along the same lines as Old Gumphrey for a while. I have played a few LFR sessions with 4 strikers & its fun & edgy.
I have a feeling it works better in smaller parties than bigger ones - the bad guys can focus fire better with more of them which can overload the strikers more. The DM can focus tactically, to drop one guy in a given encounter, or strategically, to drain one guy of surges way before the others - though this is somewhat metagaming.
It takes me back to City Of Heroes days (not that 4e is like an MMO ) where my favourite team was a tank, a leader & the rest DPS.
There were debates in that game on whether a second tanker (4e defender) was ever wanted and if even the first was simply a self fullfilling prophecy.
In that game all defenders (4e Leader) was a viable team as they had massive stacking buffs. It has lead me to look at all warlord parties (who are the most offensive leaders) & they look pretty viable (if really dull & probably broken) too.
To challenge this group, I recommend Minions. Hordes of minions. Drop 30 figures on the board. On round 2, have one of them bolt out the door hollering for reinforcements, and on round 5 bring in 2 elite artillery with minions in front of them.
Absolutley... Strikers can deal metric -loads of damage, but they still have trouble hitting more than one target at a time. A horde of appropriate level minions backed up by some artillery can overwhelm a group of strikers pretty quickly.
__________________ The Pbartender
"I don't believe it. There she goes again! She's tidied up, and I can't find anything! All my tubes and wires and careful notes and antiquated notions..." - Thomas Dolby
No, all you did was indicate you've never seen either class played very well. Initiative is hardly required, particularly for classes with 9 spell levels, like sorcerers.
) where my favourite team was a tank, a leader & the rest DPS. 
Linear Mode
And yet another word from our sponsors
