D&D 4E Running player commentary on PCat's 4E Campaign - Paragon Tier

AbdulAlhazred said:

4e isn't really a very casual system.

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Interesting -- my experience, at least with mid- to high-level casters, is the very opposite. For 1e through 3e, a caster had this huge panoply of spells, and to understand any of them, you had to flip to the page in the PH that listed the spell. By contrast, in 4e, casters have a smaller list of spells with concise effects, each fully described on the power card/character sheet.

I never wanted to play a caster in previous versions of D&D because I didn't want to have to memorize the strengths and weaknesses of literally dozens of spells in order to be effective. By contrast, when playing a 4e character, I can quickly skim my short list of powers to know what might be a good idea at the time.

I played a 4e wizard for the first time over the weekend. I had basically no understanding of the 4e wizard powers beforehand, and I got by just fine.

Blackjack said:

Interesting -- my experience, at least with mid- to high-level casters, is the very opposite. For 1e through 3e, a caster had this huge panoply of spells, and to understand any of them, you had to flip to the page in the PH that listed the spell. By contrast, in 4e, casters have a smaller list of spells with concise effects, each fully described on the power card/character sheet.

I never wanted to play a caster in previous versions of D&D because I didn't want to have to memorize the strengths and weaknesses of literally dozens of spells in order to be effective. By contrast, when playing a 4e character, I can quickly skim my short list of powers to know what might be a good idea at the time.

I played a 4e wizard for the first time over the weekend. I had basically no understanding of the 4e wizard powers beforehand, and I got by just fine.

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I think a lot depends on the particular player and class though. I agree that 4ed wizards are generally much less complex than prior editions, but at the same time, the non-essentials martial classes are far more complex with many more options available. All the added feats, abilities, powers, etc. make for a much more complex character -- particularly if you choose feats or powers that give conditional modifiers.

Now personally I feel that more options is gold. After all, the more options you have, the greater the ability to create a truly unique character. I don't want every fighter to look and play the same, I want to see somebody's personal spin on that class. However, if you are a Tactician type player, the extra options can actually be a hindrance as you agonize over every action (something I've seen more than a couple players do). When dealing with tacticians, its sometimes nice for them to have to say "I guess I'll try to bash his face in." as opposed to "Well, I could go here and use power X which might hit these 3 guys for small damage as well as knocking them prone if you want, or I could over to this square and use power Y and deal slightly more damage to these other 2 guys, but they won't get knocked prone . . . oh, but they will take a -2 to hit. Or finally, I could just walk up to this big guy and smack him really hard for a lot of damage assuming I hit, but I don't have combat advantage against him. Oh wait, Tim did you want a save? Because if you do, I can choose this fourth option."

Then invariably, you get somebody who 5 minutes after their turn is over "Oh, I forgot, that ogre I hit, should have taken 2 extra damage because of (insert reason here)"

Don't get me wrong, I still love 4ed, and its the only edition I'm playing, but it can be frustrating both for certain players, and for DM's or other players who are gaming with the more tactically minded players.

Here's a quick & dirty facsimile, Pcat:

CA: +2 AC, +3 att, +2 dam, SA 1/turn
CA & Bloodied: +2 AC, +4 att, +15 dam, SA 1/turn
Bloodied: +1 att, +8 dam

I wanted to make sure it was distinctive, easy to read, and didn't take up too much space on her sheet.

That's a mighty fine idea thar, Blargney. I think I will look into it.

Sagiro said:

Logan now has a multitude of little conditional damage bonuses:
- +8 damage to an Oath target who has moved away
- +1d6 to a bloodied enemy granting combat advantage
- +1d6 to an enemy he’s hidden from
- +2 when he hits his Oath target with a charge attack
- +5 necrotic/radiant damage the first time he hits his Oath target each turn.
- +3d6 1/encounter with combat advantage (sneak attack)

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Yowza. This must be the "I dealt the damage because my DM couldn't remember and neither could I" avenger build.

If you were ok with using the spirit of these feats and deviating from RAW, you could consolidate the damage like so...

Oath target: +5 damage first attack each turn, jumps to +10 if target separates from melée with avenger and avenger closes the gap next turn.

CA: +1d6, jumps to +2d6 if hidden from bloodied enemy

It's not exact but I think it would be easier to track and keeps the spirit of what the avenger's player is going for.

This is so much easier to deal with as a barbarian. Extra damage? No, charge someone, extra attack, extra attack, extra charge. Much more fun. Or at least easier on my non-4e mind.

That being said, 4e finally has enough options that I don't feel shoe-horned into doing specific class and race Combos. 3e has spoiled me, but there's a lot of promise that you guys are showcasing, Sagiro, PC. Thanks for that.

Iron Sky said:

In my experience, the conditional modifiers aren't too bad when you work your way to them from a low level, adding one every few sessions. It's when you make a paragon/epic character from scratch that you forget stuff constantly...

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This matches my experience as well. PCs who build from level 1-30 are much more efficient in epic than players who don't. PCs who sort of leap up into paragon/epic just lose track of just about everything they are supposed to be doing constantly. On the other hand with months of experience playing the same character over a long campaign, most of those bonuses become pretty second nature after a while.

I do think though that anyone who overloads themselves on conditional modifiers is just asking for it to completely backfire.

Aegeri said:

This matches my experience as well. PCs who build from level 1-30 are much more efficient in epic than players who don't. PCs who sort of leap up into paragon/epic just lose track of just about everything they are supposed to be doing constantly.

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Ohhh yes, I cringe whenever I hear someone talk about running a 4e one-shot game at paragon or epic level.

Aegeri said:

This matches my experience as well. PCs who build from level 1-30 are much more efficient in epic than players who don't. PCs who sort of leap up into paragon/epic just lose track of just about everything they are supposed to be doing constantly. On the other hand with months of experience playing the same character over a long campaign, most of those bonuses become pretty second nature after a while.

I do think though that anyone who overloads themselves on conditional modifiers is just asking for it to completely backfire.

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I agree on both counts. Having played one shot paragons and characters from 1-16 it is far easier to remember all the conditionals on the long term characters than it is the one shots. The later seems very true for paragon leaders other than clerics and paragon bow rangers with all their interupts.

For my Killswitch character that started in paragon I have a cheat sheet with possible nova rounds and every enncounter first turns for myself and a cheat sheet I give to the other players with the different healing and save options, and iniative bonus. Otherwise I would go nuts and forget all sorts of things.

(This is a placeholder post for the game 2 weeks ago where a massive dog-gobbler battle ensued, and we saw what a properly prepared wizard can do against minions. Both Sagiro and I have been ludicrously busy, and I've been sick. We'll get to it!)