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I can't speak for Sacrifice to Caiphon. I don't recall the reasoning on that off the top of my head, and I'm not interested in looking at it again unless someone proposes changing it.
I voted against reaper's touch not because I thought it was unbalanced -- it's clearly not -- but because I thought it made the game less fun, by reducing the diversity of characters. If any ranged caster can get a powerful basic melee attack just for the price of one feat, I think there's a likelihood of it becoming a must-have feat, like implement expertise. Which reduces player choice and produces homogenous characters, and makes this whole thing less fun.
I'm sorry you disagree, but at some point someone has to make a decision, and for my sins, part of that task has fallen to me. I'm doing my best to make the right decision as I see it. If you think I'm doing a terrible job, well... we've got a stack of character reviews that need doing, and we'll have even more when PHB2 comes live. It's no coincidence that people who help out with character reviews for a while often find themselves on the judge list.
Incidentally, I agree with Cov on reaper's touch for the exact same reasons, it's not a problem of power in that case. I think it's simply a badly-thought feat.
And let's be grateful that we've had and have covaithe as a judge. We can agree to disagree, but I doubt anybody ever thought you've done a bad job, cov!
Come join us in the Shifting Seas and Transitive Isles of Living 4th Edition, amazing adventures and great fun guaranteed!
Then to play community 4e in Eberron join us in LEB too! Give life to your characters and contribute to the living settings!
Please excuse my poor English. It is not my first language.
I can't speak for Sacrifice to Caiphon. I don't recall the reasoning on that off the top of my head, and I'm not interested in looking at it again unless someone proposes changing it.
I voted against reaper's touch not because I thought it was unbalanced -- it's clearly not -- but because I thought it made the game less fun, by reducing the diversity of characters. If any ranged caster can get a powerful basic melee attack just for the price of one feat, I think there's a likelihood of it becoming a must-have feat, like implement expertise. Which reduces player choice and produces homogenous characters, and makes this whole thing less fun.
I guess my thinking is you still have to burn a feat to get a melee basic attack and most ranged PC's shouldn't be using it all that often anyways unless the defenders aren't doing their jobs. We should also nerf intelligent blademaster from FRCS then as well. Same thing for that class. You make STR your drop stat, pump up INT and take that feat. It's a must-have for 95% of swordmages.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atanatotatos
Incidentally, I agree with Cov on reaper's touch for the exact same reasons, it's not a problem of power in that case. I think it's simply a badly-thought feat.
And let's be grateful that we've had and have covaithe as a judge. We can agree to disagree, but I doubt anybody ever thought you've done a bad job, cov!
I second this covaithe. I don't think you're doing a poor job or even an average job. Note, I was running a high fever when I was up earlier today, my apologies if it came across as vitriolic. I'm not calling for your head or anything, as that would be a huge negative impact for L4W.
I'm just saying it's irrelevent, it's following the must have feat line of thinking and your point pushes my point even more so. Therefore from a flavour POV it's the same as Reaper's Touch (or at least along the same vein) and from a power-level point of view it's actually significantly more powerful than Reaper's Touch as you will use it many many more times as a defender.
That being said I will respect covaithe's decision as he has stated his reasoning and I don't disagree too much, just want it balanced across the board.
Who's talking about banning Reaper's Touch? We're talking about making it Shadar-Kai only, like the rest of the death-themed feats in the Shadar-Kai article which is about options for Shadar-Kai.
Oh c'mon! they're ranged strikers! They really don't *need* that. If they want an additional option, they pay for it with feats and items.
And as a side note, warlocks are at low-end of the scale for strikers only if you just look at DPR. I know that strikers are mostly about damage, but a glass canno that can't survive a tough combat, or a one-trick pony that cannot adapt to situations are useless.
Warlocks have great survivability and many controller-like powers. They're just less straight-forward than the other strikers, they need a slightly more tactical approach. But that doesn't mean they're weaker.
Come join us in the Shifting Seas and Transitive Isles of Living 4th Edition, amazing adventures and great fun guaranteed!
Then to play community 4e in Eberron join us in LEB too! Give life to your characters and contribute to the living settings!
Please excuse my poor English. It is not my first language.
Before launching into this I want to say Ata is awesome, and a pillar of the community. Secondly, I'll never be playing a warlock, take the rest of this with those two things in mind.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atanatotatos
Oh c'mon! they're ranged strikers! They really don't *need* that. If they want an additional option, they pay for it with feats and items.
Like reaper's touch...
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atanatotatos
And as a side note, warlocks are at low-end of the scale for strikers only if you just look at DPR.
Forgive my ignorance, but what attacks do warlocks have that outshine the ranger, damage wise? Warlocks are behind on DPR, and nova damage, as far as I know. But I don't play either so I may be ignorant.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Atanatotatos
I know that strikers are mostly about damage, but a glass canno that can't survive a tough combat, or a one-trick pony that cannot adapt to situations are useless.
Warlocks have great survivability and many controller-like powers. They're just less straight-forward than the other strikers, they need a slightly more tactical approach. But that doesn't mean they're weaker.
I agree, glass cannons who can't survive are annoying. I also think one trick ponies are useless. That is why I don't think Warlocks should be the only striker with a pony that does only one trick (ranged striking).
Warlocks have decent survivability and a few controller-like powers, little area/close burst/blast, and some nice single target status conditions. Just like every other striker.
They are supposed to be on par with other strikers, and are forced instead to carefully plan every detail of their character in order to do so. Tactical approaches are for every class, especially strikers. Not just the Warlock.
Yes, they are weaker... except that they target NADs, and even that is little condolence due to having little opportunity for a flanking bonus.
Sidenote
Warlocks don't *need* to be viable at melee range, however Kamotz would really appreciate it. So would other strength based Clerics, and Warlords.
*Uhm*
Well, first of all thanks Cabana. Nice as ever
Then. I disagree.
Reaper's touch is not equivalent to paying "with feats and items". Paying with feats and items means taking martial training, buying a level-appropriate weapon, and probably some more feats to be more efficient with those melee basic attacks. Mo, reaper's touch is a single feat, and then you're good to go with just the warlock-is stuff you'd take anyway.
Aside from that. Yes, Warlocks fall behind in damage relatively to the other strikers. I did say that: warlocks are the weakest strikers if you only mind DPR(dmg per round).
But it's wrong to assume that only them are limited to one range (melee or ranged).
Rangers are split into two categories, and rigid ones: you are either a melee ranger or a ranged ranger, despite most powers being usable in both ways, you won't be able to do both.
Barbarians are only melee. Avengers can do both, but they can only really shine in melee (because of their oath). Rogues can efficiently do both, but their striker bonus to damage is somewhat situational: it's easier to gain in melee (flanking), but roges are rather frail, and at range it's more tricky. So I'd say all the strikers are somewhat limited in their choices.
Also, yeah, warlocks are not the only ones that get some single-target control. But they're only comparable, in that respect, with rogues, that, like them, fall behind in damage after the first few levels. And, like rogues, have a lot of utility to make up for that.
All characters in 4e have to be played with some tactics in mind, true, but warlocks more than most, due to their unique mechanics. Their curse, their pact boon, their shadow walk, and, last but not least, their prime strike feature certainly make them more challenging to successfully play than, say, a ranger or a barbarian. But they'll certainly make them live longer.
And finally, one month after PHB2, Arcane Power will be eligible to be approved, and that should bring quite a few new options for you (and I think you won't be disappointed!)
Come join us in the Shifting Seas and Transitive Isles of Living 4th Edition, amazing adventures and great fun guaranteed!
Then to play community 4e in Eberron join us in LEB too! Give life to your characters and contribute to the living settings!
Please excuse my poor English. It is not my first language.
I used to be in favor of houseruling problematic things. But now, looking at all the potential houserules for new players to comb through, and for character approvers to remember, I'm with those who'd rather ban than change. I just don't think it's worth the hassle of codifying and remembering all those little changes, with so many people involved.
I think there are some things that could use a banning - like reckless weapons. I'm OK with a power or a feat that lets you get a little spike of awesome (I'll be visiting the Sacrifice to Caiphon thread momentarily, don't worry), but things like reckless weapons that purely increase your awesome across the board I don't like - especially when they play into the hands of classes that are already the most awesome at whatever they emphasize.
Say what you will, it's not much fun being consistently overshadowed by one of your fellow players; especially if you have two characters of the same class, or even role, and one is clearly better at what they're both supposed to be doing. 4e is a team game, and so I think we need to look at team dynamics. If we let things get to the point where a party says "Oh no! Not him!" when one class of a certain role leaves the party, but can't be bothered when another class of the same role leaves, I think there's a problem.
I don't think we're at that point, but we should avoid getting there. Battlerage vigor, in my opinion, is an example of an element that could have that effect. I don't want people thinking this: "Who wants that regular sword & board or two-handed fighter in the party when you could have a battlerager with 1.5 times as much durability?!"
If you don't care, then you don't care. If the mechanics is just a way of resolving those random aspects of the game, and you don't care how things get done as long as they get done, that's fine. But there are a lot of people who care how well their character is doing in the team, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that (probably because I'm one of those people - if I'm not doing well, I'm not helping as much as I could be).
Oh yes, and this is of course all my humble opinion. Take with a grain of salt.
*Uhm*
Rangers are split into two categories, and rigid ones: you are either a melee ranger or a ranged ranger, despite most powers being usable in both ways, you won't be able to do both.
Actually, I'd say that rangers are the only striker class that can do both equally well. Take the Two-Blade Fighting Style, give yourself 18 Str and 18 Dex (you can do this with 25-pt buy by buying 18 Str, 16 Dex and taking a race with +2 to Dex, or vice versa), take Defensive Mobility as your level 1 feat, and buy two swords and a bow. Now you have all the abilities of both a melee and ranged ranger, at the cost of 1 feat and not having any Wis bonus for secondary abilities. (If you really want that Wis bonus, you could take just Str and use heavy thrown weapons instead, but there aren't any that are as good as a bow.)
It's really, really difficult to make it work, although theoretically possible.
You'll have to spend a lot of money on equipment, and fall short anyway. Same for feats, and sometimes for powers too. Also,balancing ability scores so that both Strenght and Dexterity are high enough without sacrificing too much the defenses and the hp is... well, I'd say impossible.
Sure it's possible to play a ranger that operates both at range and in melee, but it surely won't be an "optimal" one, so...
Come join us in the Shifting Seas and Transitive Isles of Living 4th Edition, amazing adventures and great fun guaranteed!
Then to play community 4e in Eberron join us in LEB too! Give life to your characters and contribute to the living settings!
Please excuse my poor English. It is not my first language.
I'll be making a wizard, not a warlock... But thanks for reminding me, I still haven't started building the template.
As a wizard, Reaper's Touch is useless, as I'll never take magic missile (even if I got 4 at-wills).
Back on topic:
I think I understand what you are conveying Ata, I still disagree, but will support your decision due to how well it's been thought out.
Now that we are past that part, I agree with Lord Sessadore that an outright ban on an option is better than altering the option. Once PHB3 comes out, alterations may get crazy. (Hybrid Character Rules come out...)
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