Dragon Magazine Playtest: The Druid (merged)

[Mengu]

I think there is a lot of knee jerk reaction here.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"Sup, Mr. Wizard guy? I'm a lot like you, except, I kinda make you look like a chump. Pretty much, anything you can do, I can do better. Cloud of Daggers? Neat, I guess. I've got something just like that, except mine affects NINE squares at-will, instead of just one. Kinda makes me feel like I'm cheating, frankly. I also get a lot more hit points and better armor than you, oh, and I can use the same stat that gives me more hit points to also raise my AC."

Just to point out, Cloud of Daggers will kill a minion, even on a miss. Flame Seed does absolutely nothing on a miss. Also Cloud of Daggers typically does 1d6+Int+Wis damage against non-minions, which is more than Flame Seed, but flame seed affects multiple targets, so they are not easy to compare.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"Plus I can smash face in melee whenever I want, if I get bored with casting way better spells than you from range. If I was any kind of reasonable class, I'd have to, like, pick between two main stats for my melee or ranged focus, but heh, I'm a druid, so just Wisdom does it all for me. All of my melee at-will attack powers hit non-AC defenses, and I use my ranged-spell stat for them, and oh yeah, they're ALL basic attacks. Heh."

Wizards have a number of close attack options, but that's not their schtick. What way better range spells are you talking about? Scorching Burst is still the king of at-will range AoE damage.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"I can auto-kill a pile of minions without an attack roll, using just a level 1 at-will power. You? Not only can I set up colossal zone of auto-damage at-will, I've got a whole ton of other at-wills and encounter powers that I can use, at range OR in melee, to slide or pull people into, through, and back into my huge at-will deathfire zone."

If you are talking about Flame Seed again, you still have to hit with the initial attack to kill those minions. Scorching burst is a much more reliable way to kill minions since more rolls will average out to a few kills with each casting instead of all or nothing like Flame Seed.

The area for Flame Seed does get bigger against large opponents. I'll give you that. I'm not entirely sure it's worth the hassle to try and slide stuff into the zone for just Wisdom damage (hardly "deathfire zone"), especially at higher levels.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"Did I mention I can shred guys in melee, and have better AC and hit points than anyone besides the defenders? Yeah. Did I mention that I'm sliding and/or slowing people with my melee basic attacks, all the time, in addition to full damage, against a weak defense? Yeah, I'm a controller, by the way. Like you! Well, not really. I DO cast ranged AoEs and zones at-will, when I'm not busy doing cooler stuff in melee than the fighters can do."

Warlocks typically have better hit points, and ways of getting temporary hit points. Ditto for Barbarians. Archer rangers will typically have better AC.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"I've also got more at-wills than most other two classes combined. Your little spellbook thing is okay, I guess, but I get to actually do more stuff in reality, not just in theory "oh, I COULD have memorized that other spell today..." I've got frost shock, too. Er, frost "flash" -- whatever we're calling it. Call of the Beast is just so absurd for an at-will that I'm not even going to go into that one."

I'm not sure why you think Call of the Beast is absurd. It's not even a power I would pick for a druid I'd want to play. It will frequently do no damage and have no effect. Not my idea of an absurd power.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"Also, are you handing out free healing to multiple party members, without requiring surge use, WHILE killing a bunch of minions at range, Mr. Wizard? At 1st level? Oh no, I guess you're not. Dude, you're kinda weak. Wait'll you see my higher-level powers, my special feats, my special items, my paragon paths, my epic destinies. I'll be free-action-shifting into a ridiculous flying form before you can finish reading PHB2. Watch me."

The healing from Fires of Life is a nice little bonus, but little is the keyword there. As a daily power for someone who is trying to have a secondary role of leader, it's down right pathetic.

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

"By the way, I'm a dwarf, so it's pretty intuitive that I'd be the ideal exemplar of druidism, don't you think? When I think of preserving nature, I think of a race of obsessive strip-miners with countless pollution-spewing forges, personally. How about you?"

Yeah ok. This one threw me off too at first, but I'll get over it. I can see a dwarf Thorn Whipping an enemy closer, changing into a boar-like creature, and shredding them in melee.

[Jhaelen]

While it looks like the 4E druid will be a really neat class, there's something I dislike about it:

The Beastform powers don't fit my mental image of a druid at all. They make me think of a 3E Psychic Warrior or a multiclassed Egoist but never of a druid.

If I had to guess, I'd say this implementation of the druid was probably mostly inspired from WoW rather than either the D&D druid of previous editions or what little is known about real-world druids. Of course, I can't be entirely sure, since I'm not a WoW player, but maybe others here are and can offer some insight?

It bears repeating: I don't say that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that these beastshape powers don't say 'druid' to me. The other controller-like powers are a lot better and more fitting, imho.

[Sir Brennen]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

It bears repeating: I don't say that this is necessarily a bad thing. It's just that these beastshape powers don't say 'druid' to me. The other controller-like powers are a lot better and more fitting, imho.

D&D Druids have never been a simulation of real world druids anymore than clerics simulate real world religious figures. However, the "I can turn into anything!" aspect is very reminiscent of higher level 1st ed. druids to me.

One power I think that needs to be included to recall the druids of editions past would be one which allows the character to spend a healing surge to regain HPs when shifting from beast to humanoid.

[Jack99]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

If I had to guess, I'd say this implementation of the druid was probably mostly inspired from WoW rather than either the D&D druid of previous editions or what little is known about real-world druids. Of course, I can't be entirely sure, since I'm not a WoW player, but maybe others here are and can offer some insight?

WoW druids have 3 specific forms and are good healers - that's two defining characteristics that don't fit.

[Jonathan Moyer]

Originally Posted by Jhaelen

If I had to guess, I'd say this implementation of the druid was probably mostly inspired from WoW rather than either the D&D druid of previous editions or what little is known about real-world druids. Of course, I can't be entirely sure, since I'm not a WoW player, but maybe others here are and can offer some insight?

When the 4e druid can assume Defender-like or Striker-like forms, I think of WoW's bear and cat form a bit. Howevever, WoW druids can also be fairly effective healers, and I don't really see that in the 4e druid.

I think if you tend to see 4e as "too MMO," you'll probably think the 4e druid is too much like the WoW druid, because the 4e druid has been designed according to 4e's principles. But otherwise, I'm not seeing too dramatic a shift from previous editions. The spirit and nature of the class is retained quite well.

[Plane Sailing]

Originally Posted by Mengu

Just to point out, Cloud of Daggers will kill a minion, even on a miss. Flame Seed does absolutely nothing on a miss. Also Cloud of Daggers typically does 1d6+Int+Wis damage against non-minions, which is more than Flame Seed, but flame seed affects multiple targets, so they are not easy to compare.

Since the Errata/Updates says

Target [Addition]
Player’s Handbook, page 57
Add the following sentences to the end of the first paragraph: “Some powers
include objects as targets. At the DM’s discretion, a power that targets a creature can also target an object, whether or not the power lists an object as a potential target.”

So it is possible (at DM's discretion) for a druid to target something near a bunch of minions and thus get off the minion-killing goodness of flame seed without having to actually hit a difficult, dodging target. Aim it at the easy-to-hit object and watch the minions around it shrivel.

Won't work if the DM likes saying 'No', but I'd guess for most people that I see expecting considerable latitude from DMs on a range of stuff related to spells, it is pretty easy to justify lobbing the acorn by aiming at the ground near the minions.

Cheers

[firesnakearies]

Originally Posted by Mengu

Just to point out, Cloud of Daggers will kill a minion, even on a miss. Flame Seed does absolutely nothing on a miss.

Ah, you're absolutely right about this. Somehow, it entirely escaped my notice that Flame Seed wouldn't create the zone if the initial attack missed. Yeah, that does make the power a LOT less obscene. Good call. I was thinking that you got the zone of minion doom automatically, for some reason. I need to read more carefully, apparently.

What way better range spells are you talking about? Scorching Burst is still the king of at-will range AoE damage.

Scorching Burst may do a few extra points of damage, but I don't see that as being very relevant, really. Wizards and druids are controllers. Their spells, in my opinion, should be trying to do one of two things: kill minions outright, or hamper the movement or positioning of the real monsters so as to put them at tactical disadvantage. Hence, controlling the battlefield.

I think that sliding all of the targets 1 square (Chill Wind) is vastly better than the few extra points of damage which will largely be insignificant to tougher monsters anyway. Sliding them into zones, into difficult terrain, into the melee range of your buddies, out of attack position, into position for further AoE attacks, off of cliffs or into other hazards, etc. Sliding a whole group of enemies around while ALSO doing minion-killing damage, at-will, is a sweet power. I think Chill Wind trumps Scorching Burst handily for the controller role.

The area for Flame Seed does get bigger against large opponents. I'll give you that. I'm not entirely sure it's worth the hassle to try and slide stuff into the zone for just Wisdom damage (hardly "deathfire zone"), especially at higher levels.

It doesn't seem like much of a hassle when the druid has so many powers that pull or slide already. You're hitting them with stuff that does damage itself, plus sliding them in and out of the fire. The fact that the fire doesn't hurt allies is also really beefy, too. But you're right, it's not quite as good as I originally thought.

The healing from Fires of Life is a nice little bonus, but little is the keyword there. As a daily power for someone who is trying to have a secondary role of leader, it's down right pathetic.

I wouldn't call Fires of Life little. It could potentially pass out 90 points of free, non-surge-using healing to your party, at 1st level. Who else could do anything even remotely close to that? I know that's a pretty unlikely scenario, but it's possible. And really, in nearly any case in which you'd actually choose to use it, you'd probably end up getting more healing out of it than any other 1st level power gives out.

Even if I only have a 14 Constitution, and only kill two targets with it right away, and no others take the ongoing damage, that's 14 points of free healing, which is probably more than most people will get back from a Cure Light Wounds, which is a level 2 daily power which doesn't also damage an AoE worth of enemies. And you could easily kill more than two targets, and/or have higher than a 14 Con. I think it's much more likely that I could get 25 or 30 points of healing out of that power, at LEAST, every time I use it, USING NO SURGES, which flatly blows away any other low-level healing power. Oh, AND I'm killing minions and/or hurting real monsters at the same time.

Fires of Life is amazing.



But yeah, I was overreacting. Mostly being a bit over-the-top on purpose. I still do think that for most players, throwing personal flavor preferences out of the equation, the choice between a druid or a wizard as the group's controller will be a bit unfairly one-sided in the favor of druids now.

Not everyone will feel this way, of course.



$

[amysrevenge]

Originally Posted by Plane Sailing

Won't work if the DM likes saying 'No', but I'd guess for most people that I see expecting considerable latitude from DMs on a range of stuff related to spells, it is pretty easy to justify lobbing the acorn by aiming at the ground near the minions.

Yeah, but then you get to my favourite cheese of all, which I got from force orb.

Player: "I target the ground with Force Orb"
DM: "Uhhh, OK, go ahead"
Player: (rolls) "Awesome, I hit!"
DM: (chuckling) "Good for you. Next."
Player: "Not so fast. I do..." (rolls) "... 8 damage to every foe adjacent to the ground that I can hit the Reflex defense of."
DM: "Huh?"
Player: "Yeah, any foe adjacent to the 'the object' I just hit - in other words, the ground. You know that dude back in town who kicked my butt in the tavern? He's probably adjacent to the ground right now. What was his Reflex defense again? How about the evil overlord three kingdoms over? He's not sleeping in bunkbeds, is he?"

[firesnakearies]

Originally Posted by amysrevenge

Yeah, but then you get to my favourite cheese of all, which I got from force orb.

Player: "I target the ground with Force Orb"
DM: "Uhhh, OK, go ahead"
Player: (rolls) "Awesome, I hit!"
DM: (chuckling) "Good for you. Next."
Player: "Not so fast. I do..." (rolls) "... 8 damage to every foe adjacent to the ground that I can hit the Reflex defense of."
DM: "Huh?"
Player: "Yeah, any foe adjacent to the 'the object' I just hit - in other words, the ground. You know that dude back in town who kicked my butt in the tavern? He's probably adjacent to the ground right now. What was his Reflex defense again? How about the evil overlord three kingdoms over? He's not sleeping in bunkbeds, is he?"

I laughed.

[Rechan]

I find it funny about the whole "This is WoW" argument. Not a few hours ago, a player - who also plays WoW - complained that the Druid's form isn't specific enough; he wanted form-specific powers, like his WoW Druid.

I also don't think the 4e druid can "tank". Facilitate a striker in a sense, yes, but they don't have the AC, HP or marking power of a "tank", nor the extra damage of a striker. Woe be you who uses the druid as your front line.

[firesnakearies]

Originally Posted by Rechan

I also don't think the 4e druid can "tank". Facilitate a striker in a sense, yes, but they don't have the AC, HP or marking power of a "tank", nor the extra damage of a striker. Woe be you who uses the druid as your front line.

Maybe not the AC or HP, but Call of the Beast makes Divine Challenge look like a child's petulant pout of marking.

And a dwarf druid with a 20 Con could have pretty darn respectable HP and AC, too. 3 less HP than an equivalent fighter, and equal AC to a fighter in scale mail with a light shield. That's hardly "woe" worthy.


EDIT: Dwarf druid with a 20 Con in Beast Form with the Staff Fighting feat starts with a 19 AC, which is as good as scale mail plus a heavy shield. As soon as he can pick up Two Weapon Defense, he's got a 20, before anything special like magic items, buffs, stat increases, paragon path features, paragon feats, and so on. (Which means, from there on out, he's got the same AC as paladins and fighters.)

EDIT 2: And all of this is BEFORE we see all of the druid-specific feats and other goodies which will invariably end up making them BETTER tanks than fighters. Mark my words.

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by firesnakearies

I wouldn't call Fires of Life little. It could potentially pass out 90 points of free, non-surge-using healing to your party, at 1st level. Who else could do anything even remotely close to that? I know that's a pretty unlikely scenario, but it's possible.

Through similar logic, with an 18 intelligence, Scorching Burst can do 36 more points of damage than Chill Wind. And Fireball is an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction that potentially deals 147d6+392 damage every time my party's wizard casts it.

And really, in nearly any case in which you'd actually choose to use it, you'd probably end up getting more healing out of it than any other 1st level power gives out.

I wouldn't make that assumption. Its a burst 1. You need as many targets in there as possible.

If you miss a target in the burst, you get half of 1d6+wis damage.
If you hit a target, but it makes a save against the ongoing damage before it dies, an ally heals your Con mod in damage.
If you hit a target, and it dies before it can save against the ongoing damage, an ally heals 5 plus your Con mod.

That's a lot of things to come together at once inside a Burst 1. The damage is alright, so I can't say the power is bad, but if you're looking for more than a slight healing bonus this really isn't the power for you.

Your ideal situation for healing is to bomb a couple of minions with it, but even with, say, four minions, you're going to miss about 2. So you're going to get to heal 10+2[Con]. Of course, as payment for that healing, you're killing the same number of minions with a daily power that you could have killed with Chill Wind. Which is sort of a waste of a daily power that deals 1d6+Wis +5 ongoing fire damage.

And its not really fair to compare a daily attack power to a daily utility power. They're really not on the same power scale. Beacon of Hope has the potential to heal far, far more hit points than this spell ever will. All you need is to have two allies in the (far larger) burst of Beacon of Hope and an 18 wisdom cleric can heal 18 damage, plus whatever gains you get from Weakening your enemies, plus whatever gains you get from improving your other healing powers for the duration of the fight.

[Cadfan]

Originally Posted by Rechan

I also don't think the 4e druid can "tank". Facilitate a striker in a sense, yes, but they don't have the AC, HP or marking power of a "tank", nor the extra damage of a striker. Woe be you who uses the druid as your front line.

I'm kind of worried that the druid will find himself tanking even though he doesn't mean to. He's loaded with melee powers that slow and daze.

Slowing an enemy who's adjacent to you makes it more likely to attack you.

Same with dazing an enemy who's adjacent to you.

You get the idea. I think that survival may require careful use of defender allies and shifting away from foes who can't move and attack in the same round.

[MrMyth]

Originally Posted by Cadfan

I'm kind of worried that the druid will find himself tanking even though he doesn't mean to. He's loaded with melee powers that slow and daze.

Slowing an enemy who's adjacent to you makes it more likely to attack you.

Same with dazing an enemy who's adjacent to you.

You get the idea. I think that survival may require careful use of defender allies and shifting away from foes who can't move and attack in the same round.

I think that is the biggest advantage of the free shift when popping out of Wild Shape. Round 1, cast a spell, wild shape. Round 2, move into melee, debuff an enemy, then wild shape - escaping melee, and leaving the enemy unable to attack you. It doesn't work with slow, but it does work with daze/immobilize/prone. I really see this as key to the melee controller concept, without turning into a (fragile) defender in the process.

[MrMyth]

Originally Posted by Baumi

This might be, but a Preview is just an Advertisement and quite useless for a Dragon Subscriber. Level 1-3 is to low for most ongoing campaigns and new Campaigns will surely not include a Class since you soon outgrow that level and that player would have to change his Character.

It's nice to have something to quell the curiosity about the new classes, but I want Articles that can actually be used by Players or the GM.

This month's Dragon has the same number of articles and columns as usual, entirely outside of the previews. I prefer to view the previews as bonus content, which I'm more than happy to get - and many others seem pleased with as well, rather than simply useless. I certainly agree that I wouldn't want this to replace all the usual content in the magazine - but as that doesn't seem to be happening, I'm not too worried.

[Cadfan]

MrMyth- You're absolutely correct, I think.

[Zsig]

Hum... Slowing and Sliding people with Opportinuty Attacks seems rather sexy to me.

Yeah, I guess theoretically they could make some interesting pseudo-Defenders, more than that, only seeing them playing in game to make a judgement.

[Sir Brennen]

I wonder how multi-classing into Druid will be handled. Without allowing Wildshape as part of the initial multi-class feat, that's a whole category of powers which characters dipping into Druid won't have access to. But how would you limit Wildshape to be on par with other multi-class feats if you did include it?

[Fallen Seraph]

Originally Posted by Sir Brennen

I wonder how multi-classing into Druid will be handled. Without allowing Wildshape as part of the initial multi-class feat, that's a whole category of powers which characters dipping into Druid won't have access to. But how would you limit Wildshape to be on par with other multi-class feats if you did include it?

Hmm... Well we have Multi-Class ones like Sneak Attack where you can use it once per-encounter. Perhaps it could be like Wild Shape is usable once Daily. So you could use all the Beast Powers you got in a fight, but as soon as you transform back into human form thats it.

[Sir Brennen]

Originally Posted by Fallen Seraph

Hmm... Well we have Multi-Class ones like Sneak Attack where you can use it once per-encounter. Perhaps it could be like Wild Shape is usable once Daily. So you could use all the Beast Powers you got in a fight, but as soon as you transform back into human form thats it.

That would have the effect of making any Beast Form Encounter powers the character takes also reduced to Dailies, and any At-Wills... well, still At-Wills, but only for one encounter. Seems additionally limiting for the multi-classer.

Seems most limits to Wildshape would have this compounding effect on the Beast Form powers. Maybe you just won't be able to get Wildshape without being a primary Druid. Which kinda bites, because there's so many cool character concepts that could be built around a shape-changing non-druid character...