How Important/Feasible is 3 good NADs?

[Elder-Basilisk]

Looking at typical characters, it looks to me like, at 1st level, except for the lowest AC characters such as leather armored warlocks and unarmored non-staff wizards, the character's strongest NAD is usually between equal to AC and two points behind (Though it could be as many as five points behind AC for a high AC character such as a dragonborn paladin with a shield). The weaker non-AC defenses are often four to six points behind AC--sometimes as many as seven (in the case of the dragonborn paladin) points behind AC.

This is far more than the 2 point difference assumed by the DMG and is exaccerbated by two further factors.

A. NAD defenses do not scale as well as AC. (It requires one feat per NAD to make strong NADs almost keep pace with the monsters bonuses from level increases--and even then you can only almost manage it if you are a demigod--other epic desitines fall behind. Additionally, a character can advance at most 2 NADs, some characters won't even do that).

B. The monsters that attack NADs tend to disproportionally elite, solo, higher level, or all of the above. The hobgboblin grunts and soldiers attack AC. It is the high level warcaster that uses magic to kick you in the NADs.

Thus, unless you are lucky enough to be taking an attack against your strongest NAD defense, you can expect to get hit 70-90% of the time.

 

[Mengu]

So if NAD's are hanging low, and are being kicked by higher level controllers, elites, etc, then perhaps we will see a fix for this via masterwork cloaks (feyweave) or necklaces (shadowpearl) or underwear (mithril) or some such.

But I don't think that's the root of the problem. It's not uncommon to see a dwarven cleric with 10 dexterity, 8 intelligence, and no shield. That character is starting with a reflex defense of 10. That's dismally low. At first level, it wouldn't be uncommon to face a 3rd or 4th level controller, who would only need a roll of 4 or 5.

Perhaps this is actually the intended behavior? If the enemies miss too much with their encounter or recharge powers, then they may lose some of that*scary* factor. Perhaps the designers are counting on that weakness, so the monsters can show their strength. This phenomena is not causing TPK's all the time, or making combat boring, so I'm not convinced it needs to be fixed.

 

[aurance]

It's probably to your benefit to cover a weak defense with a NAD boosting feat, and it's worth some consideration in assigning ability scores, but overall it's not a serious problem because of two things:

1) 4e progression is not expected to scale infinitely - within the 30 level frame, you will almost never have a situation where one defense is hit on a roll of 20, while the other is hit on a 1.

2) Getting hit in a NAD, unlike failing saving throws sometimes was in previous editions, is not immediately and irrevocably crippling - in any case, not an more significantly so than getting hit in your AC.

 

[deleteme123456]

So if NAD's are hanging low, and are being kicked by higher level controllers, elites, etc, then perhaps we will see a fix for this via masterwork cloaks (feyweave) or necklaces (shadowpearl) or underwear (mithril) or some such.

But I don't think that's the root of the problem. It's not uncommon to see a dwarven cleric with 10 dexterity, 8 intelligence, and no shield. That character is starting with a reflex defense of 10. That's dismally low. At first level, it wouldn't be uncommon to face a 3rd or 4th level controller, who would only need a roll of 4 or 5.

Perhaps this is actually the intended behavior? If the enemies miss too much with their encounter or recharge powers, then they may lose some of that*scary* factor. Perhaps the designers are counting on that weakness, so the monsters can show their strength. This phenomena is not causing TPK's all the time, or making combat boring, so I'm not convinced it needs to be fixed.

If you choose Dex 10 and Int 8 with your cleric, you deserve what you have coming. You'd do well to pick up shield proficiency since you probably have a hand free anyway.

I'm waiting for the chainmail bikini to come back in AV2. That's a good way to protect your NADs, but it probably has a worse check penalty than regular chainmail.

 

[Infiniti2000]

As I am not the juvenile Beavis and Butthead type who can't use or read a term without being titillated by a racy homophone, it never occurred to me that using it would arouse comment.

Them thar's some fancy words fer havin' bad grammar in the title.

Humor aside, from a DM's perspective it is not reasonable to have one character with ultra high defenses. I'd rather the whole party were balanced with each other, whether they are balanced characters in their own right or simply all skewed to the same side. Admittedly, this was a bigger obstacle in 3.X, but I still think it occurs in 4E. For example, if the DM needs to always bring out the big gun to just hit the fighter, then when the fighter goes down the others don't stand a chance. That way pretty much leads to crappy gaming IMO.

 

[Nail]

Humor aside, from a DM's perspective it is not reasonable to have one character with ultra high defenses. I'd rather the whole party were balanced with each other, whether they are balanced characters in their own right or simply all skewed to the same side. Admittedly, this was a bigger obstacle in 3.X, but I still think it occurs in 4E. For example, if the DM needs to always bring out the big gun to just hit the fighter, then when the fighter goes down the others don't stand a chance. That way pretty much leads to crappy gaming IMO.

FWIW, one of my DMs specificly requested (but not demanded) that I lower my PC's defences so that my PC was more in-line with other PCs.

And (since 4e is more of a team game than 3e) I did so. YMMV.

 

[Smeelbo]

Attack Penalties >> Defense Bonuses?

What this discussion seems to ignore (except perhaps briefly in one post) is the stacking of attack penalties upon the enemy, especially soloes. I've only been playing 4E a short while, but I have already noticed that penalties generally stack, as long as they are not from the same source, while bonuses stack only if they are of different types.

So far example, when developing a starting rogue for the kid that keeps showing up at the comic book store to play, for his other At-Will after Sly Flourish, I suggested Disheartening Strike, which applies a -2 penalty to attack rolls until the end of his next turn. While this won't stack with other Rattling attacks, it does stack with every other penalty in the book(s).

So I think the solution is not primarily building up Non-AC Defenses, especially at the expense of multiple feats, but piling on the attack penalties as high as they will stack.

As I understand it, penalties do not stack only if they are from the same or perhaps related power. So multiple Rattling attacks do not stack, even from different opponents. But penalties derived from distinct powers do stack.

Even better is the fact that stacking penalties gives increasing returns. An attack that hits half the time loses 20% of its base expected damage for each -2 penalty, so that three such penalties cuts the damage to less than half, and five such penalties (one applied by each player in the group) would diminish the attack to almost nothing.

That, I think, is the missing piece of the scaling equation.

Smeelbo

 

[brehobit]

Humor aside, from a DM's perspective it is not reasonable to have one character with ultra high defenses. I'd rather the whole party were balanced with each other, whether they are balanced characters in their own right or simply all skewed to the same side. Admittedly, this was a bigger obstacle in 3.X, but I still think it occurs in 4E. For example, if the DM needs to always bring out the big gun to just hit the fighter, then when the fighter goes down the others don't stand a chance. That way pretty much leads to crappy gaming IMO.

Humm, I tend to play a defender with the goal of having just enough offense you can't ignore me, but otherwise focus on defense. So I max out AC, and do fairly well on everything else. level 1 was 20 AC, 17 Fort, 14 reflex, 13 will. Not great, but about as good as you can do. That's a defender's job: either take attacks or punish the baddies for not swinging at you. It works poorly (IMO) if they can knock you down quickly.

The rest of the party can't suck at defense, but yeah, when the defender drops, that's a problem. Same with the leader (if had any healing left) or striker (always). The controller dropping isn't too bad as they probably did most of their stuff in the first few rounds (killed minions etc.).

Mark

 

[Nymrohd]

Especially solos, who tend to get hit in the face with every daily in the book, can well get a rather large penalty on attacks. Poor monsters need to have somewhat higher attack and defense because they are far less likely to get a circumstantial bonus (while a PC will practically always have some kind of bonus when using encounters and dailies). Do not try to simplify 4E balance with napkin math. It doesn't work.

And btw, magic items are the key to defense indeed. Just have a look at AV.

 

[Garboshnik]

Mithril underwear in the PHB2

*Bump*

Looking through the PHB2 I noticed epic-tier feats to grant a +4 untyped bonus to one of Fort/Ref/Will and a feat that grants a +2 feat bonus to all 3.

Has WotC noticed this issue and created these feats to address it?