D&D 4E A gathering of Martial Controllers - what do you think

Garthanos · Mar 10, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
I also feel like this is a complexity reducer. If a player really just wants to do some few specific things mechanically, sure its 'spamming', but why fight them? With 4e as it is today you can always find 3 powers that are effectively identical anyway. I'd rather have one power, maybe one that can actually vary based on different weapon riders for instance, that keeps the character sheet simpler and cleaner and lets you only introduce DESIRED complexity.

Right I would rather fight doldrums of spamming by making things more like rock paper scissors... and also situationally advantageous in a common set of situations... than just forbidding spamming

AbdulAlhazred · Mar 10, 2017

Garthanos said:
One place to get your minions is to have them be plucky entourage minions who are revivable after the battle is done... who are taken out of the fight by a wound but not killed or who get intimidated in to crawling off hiding but can be convinced to push on etc.

Right, but that is exactly highly gamist, because after you get burned by the lake of fire and barely survive, and fall down the endless pit of despair its not real credible that your entourage stuck around. Yet its also not kosher to strip the character of his powers....

Thus, IMHO, powers should not be used to model this kind of thing. I understand, for some people this level of abstraction is fine, they don't have a problem with it. It bugs me though.

Garthanos · Mar 10, 2017

AbdulAlhazred said:
Right, but that is exactly highly gamist, because after you get burned by the lake of fire and barely survive, and fall down the endless pit of despair its not real credible that your entourage stuck around.

We had some non-power based minions accompanying some heros I ended up ruling that without a critical hit or similar ie you are in the bloody lava they were clinging to the side of that pit and such and reasonable heroic effort would save them ( and this was because the players were putting real effort in to saving them and if felt like it fit the tropes better than easy vicious death... they still lost one)

Tony Vargas · Mar 10, 2017

Garthanos said:
We had some non-power based minions accompanying some heros I ended up ruling that without a critical hit or similar ie you are in the bloody lava they were clinging to the side of that pit and such and reasonable heroic effort would save them ( and this was because the players were putting real effort in to saving them and if felt like it fit the tropes better than easy vicious death... they still lost one)

In my campaign, the players have a ship & crew, the crew generally being window dressing, but acting as minions when it matters. I generally assumed that a dropped minion was just out of the fight, not necessarily dead. Or that new crew could be pressed into service from the surviving enemies. At Paragon they picked up some nasty fey pirates as crew, who were hard to tell apart as individuals, and, ever since, however many of them die, however graphically, there's always six of them hanging around...

At Epic, they've picked up six more minion crew, steampunk airship pirates with ray-guns (yeah, it's one of those really serious campaigns) who came with a companion character Frankenstien/Reanimator style companion character, a ship's doctor, who works a bit like an artificer, except his infusions can be used to temporarily raise the dead... 'temporarily' in the sense that if you're not conventionally raised later, you may stick around as a revenant...

...or a monster.

Garthanos · Mar 10, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
I generally assumed that a dropped minion was just out of the fight, not necessarily dead.

To me that is completely the point of minions...

Additionally if players can decide on purpose that zero hit points induced by their attacks means X this time and Y that time...
pretending the DM is cheating or something when he does the same seems silly.

The minion with wound can even become a reason to use that remove affliction ritual

Tony Vargas · Mar 10, 2017

Garthanos said:
The minion with wound can even become a reason to use that remove affliction ritual

Or to have an age-of-sail style 'ship's doctor.' Through early Paragon, one of the players liked to RP that his frightening Minotaur Warden was "A Doctor" (hey, he was trained in Heal), and in ship-combat SCs, I had him in the orlop, making Heal checks to send dropped crew back up on deck...

... with a nice new, pirate-appropriate hook or peg-leg, of course.

Garthanos · Mar 10, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
Or to have an age-of-sail style 'ship's doctor.' Through early Paragon, one of the players liked to RP that his frightening Minotaur Warden was "A Doctor" (hey, he was trained in Heal), and in ship-combat SCs, I had him in the orlop, making Heal checks to send dropped crew back up on deck...

... with a nice new, pirate-appropriate hook or peg-leg, of course.

I think they traded one affliction for another

LOL

AND of course a lower level remove affliction "martial practice" also exists (in my mind space)

Garthanos · Mar 11, 2017

doctorbadwolf said:
That wirks.

I was just pointing out that the executioner poisons are basically already controller effects, just make them a burst Y within X, and you have controller dailies. Then ditch assassin's strike for regular Assassin encounter powers, or weaker versions of the poison bombs, and ditch the +1d8 feature for more control power in the at will powers.

How about a paralyzing nerve pinch or two...

AbdulAlhazred · Mar 11, 2017

Garthanos said:
We had some non-power based minions accompanying some heros I ended up ruling that without a critical hit or similar ie you are in the bloody lava they were clinging to the side of that pit and such and reasonable heroic effort would save them ( and this was because the players were putting real effort in to saving them and if felt like it fit the tropes better than easy vicious death... they still lost one)

Right, that's of course perfectly reasonable. Do an SC frex, but that has a narrative coherency mandate associated with it. Powers, by most 4e people's reckoning, have no such thing. I'm not a huge critic of stuff like CaGI, its perhaps a bit gamist, maybe some people want to fiddle with the results a little, but mostly it just works and its fun. Having minions in your pocket gets a bit odd though.

Garthanos · Mar 11, 2017

Tony Vargas said:
I was actually pretty uncertain about extending Heavy Draw to melee, and simultaneously not sure the feature was even called for.

Look at knockdown assault... why not a nimble sliding trip (or flying kick to the head LOL) doing much the same.

Tony Vargas said:
, OTOOH, 'heavy draw' (as the name implies) could almost as easily be done by introducing composite bows with the 'heavy thrown' property...
.

Odysseus with his Bow the archer warlord is what comes to mind on this...

No one but one of his blood would have the strength to draw it was that emphasizing Strength use in archery or bloodline rights akin to Excalibur and much like Thors hammer I think it's ambiguous subject to either.

Perhaps we have room a "Ranged Training" too

, though your idea shoots for powers not just basic attacks.