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At-will class powers ruining my archetypes
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<blockquote data-quote="Cadfan" data-source="post: 4682048" data-attributes="member: 40961"><p>I'm going to disagree with you a bunch, then agree with you a little bit at the bottom. So read to that part before you respond.</p><p> </p><p></p><p>Add a small amount of realism. Look, the rules aren't going to spell out everything. The Fighter can theoretically chop down a castle with his sword because there aren't rules for dulling your weapon, unless you ad hoc them or presume fatigue. Just do the same for spellcasters.</p><p></p><p>That makes <em>no sense at all.</em></p><p> </p><p>I mean, it kind of makes sense, but, if you make Reaping Strike an encounter power, there's STILL going to be a need for a generic attack power, and your complaints will STILL apply to whatever you use to replace Reaping Strike as the at will. Even if the replacement at will is a basic melee attack, its illogical to complain that Reaping Strike becomes vanilla after a long combat and that the solution is to limit its use and add in an attack that's vanilla BEFORE a long combat. At least with the present at will system you have a couple of at will attacks, instead of just the basic melee attack.</p><p></p><p>No you didn't. If you were a wizard, investing in dexterity so that your crossbow would be more accurate when you didn't want to use a spell was a noob mistake. Unless you knew your campaign was never going to get into the middle or high levels, it simply wasn't worth it. If you were getting something else out of it as well (maybe you like ray spells) then it was worthwhile. Otherwise, no.</p><p></p><p>This is true.</p><p></p><p>Meh. It doesn't actually accomplish this goal unless you rework every class and adjust the power level. If you remove at will attacks, that trivially affects classes that use their primary ability score for their basic attacks, and greatly effects everyone else. Your elf archer cleric will still suck in an at will free system. He'll still suffer the same stat spread. Meanwhile the Fighter is still pumping strength just like before.</p><p></p><p>This would be doable, but merely removing at wills isn't enough. You'd need to rework the math.</p><p></p><p>I'm really not bothered by how characters stats are spread. I care a lot more about whether the characters can accomplish what their archetype suggests. Stats are numbers. I don't care if they're bloated or evenly spread or anything, so long as they are easy to handle mathematically and create good outcomes.</p><p> </p><p>Alright, now the part where I agree with you.</p><p> </p><p>Everyone worried that, in 4e, role would be destiny. People still worry about it, actually, even though it just shows that they don't know what they're talking about. Role isn't destiny. Role is incredibly mutable.</p><p> </p><p>But power sources? Power sources are destiny.</p><p> </p><p>Look at the 3e paladin versus the 4e paladin. The 3e paladin was mostly a martial character that learned divine magic as his career progressed. The 4e paladin starts out using the power of his god to augment his every attack. The only time he doesn't is when he charges or makes opportunity attacks.</p><p> </p><p>The wizard and the cleric had a little bit of this as well. At low levels your wizard used a crossbow at times, and the cleric made basic attacks unaugmented by magic. Of course, it didn't work quite right, particularly for the wizard. Over time his spells per day increased and eventually his crossbow became obsolete, meaning that any resources he invested in improving his crossbow skill were lost.</p><p> </p><p>4e solved that by letting everyone do their shtick immediately, and at will. In the process, that kind of killed off dual shtick characters.</p><p> </p><p>Multiclassing brings them back a bit. If you want to create an elven cleric archer, you can just make an elf cleric, and multiclass ranger. Or create an elf ranger, and multiclass cleric. You'll have to split your ability scores, but that's not really a crisis. If you're spending a lot of resources multiclassing a cleric into a ranger, dexterity will give you as much benefit as charisma would have given the straight cleric.</p><p> </p><p>I suspect that this doesn't really satisfy you, because you want the look and feel of a weapon being a backup for limited use magic. You want the weapon to be the bread and butter, generic attack, and the magic to be the big splash. Multiclassing doesn't really do that. In response, there isn't much I can say, except that running things your way would deny ME the archetypes I like, so maybe this conflict isn't really resolvable.</p><p> </p><p>Overall, though, I think that making at wills into encounter abilities in order to force people to spread their stats more and take basic attacks is fundamentally a bad idea. It doesn't undo the repetition problem, it makes it worse by forcing you to repeat your basic attack instead of your two or three at wills. It encourages stat spread, but that's not an intrinsic good from where I'm sitting. It denies access to as many archetypes as it encourages. It makes combat less tactical (even if my fighter has used up every encounter and daily power he has, I can still try to maneuver for a cleave or shift people around with footwork lure).</p><p> </p><p>And an easier solution for the lost archetypes exists. Use encounter powers to encourage them. The encounter power system and the weapon/multiclass system actually provide a great framework for adding unusual things to classes, like archery to a cleric. It wouldn't be tough to draft a multiclass path just to make this archetype available. It would do a lot less violence to the system to make these corner case character concepts available via feats and optional encounter powers than to rework the math.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Cadfan, post: 4682048, member: 40961"] I'm going to disagree with you a bunch, then agree with you a little bit at the bottom. So read to that part before you respond. Add a small amount of realism. Look, the rules aren't going to spell out everything. The Fighter can theoretically chop down a castle with his sword because there aren't rules for dulling your weapon, unless you ad hoc them or presume fatigue. Just do the same for spellcasters. That makes [I]no sense at all.[/I] I mean, it kind of makes sense, but, if you make Reaping Strike an encounter power, there's STILL going to be a need for a generic attack power, and your complaints will STILL apply to whatever you use to replace Reaping Strike as the at will. Even if the replacement at will is a basic melee attack, its illogical to complain that Reaping Strike becomes vanilla after a long combat and that the solution is to limit its use and add in an attack that's vanilla BEFORE a long combat. At least with the present at will system you have a couple of at will attacks, instead of just the basic melee attack. No you didn't. If you were a wizard, investing in dexterity so that your crossbow would be more accurate when you didn't want to use a spell was a noob mistake. Unless you knew your campaign was never going to get into the middle or high levels, it simply wasn't worth it. If you were getting something else out of it as well (maybe you like ray spells) then it was worthwhile. Otherwise, no. This is true. Meh. It doesn't actually accomplish this goal unless you rework every class and adjust the power level. If you remove at will attacks, that trivially affects classes that use their primary ability score for their basic attacks, and greatly effects everyone else. Your elf archer cleric will still suck in an at will free system. He'll still suffer the same stat spread. Meanwhile the Fighter is still pumping strength just like before. This would be doable, but merely removing at wills isn't enough. You'd need to rework the math. I'm really not bothered by how characters stats are spread. I care a lot more about whether the characters can accomplish what their archetype suggests. Stats are numbers. I don't care if they're bloated or evenly spread or anything, so long as they are easy to handle mathematically and create good outcomes. Alright, now the part where I agree with you. Everyone worried that, in 4e, role would be destiny. People still worry about it, actually, even though it just shows that they don't know what they're talking about. Role isn't destiny. Role is incredibly mutable. But power sources? Power sources are destiny. Look at the 3e paladin versus the 4e paladin. The 3e paladin was mostly a martial character that learned divine magic as his career progressed. The 4e paladin starts out using the power of his god to augment his every attack. The only time he doesn't is when he charges or makes opportunity attacks. The wizard and the cleric had a little bit of this as well. At low levels your wizard used a crossbow at times, and the cleric made basic attacks unaugmented by magic. Of course, it didn't work quite right, particularly for the wizard. Over time his spells per day increased and eventually his crossbow became obsolete, meaning that any resources he invested in improving his crossbow skill were lost. 4e solved that by letting everyone do their shtick immediately, and at will. In the process, that kind of killed off dual shtick characters. Multiclassing brings them back a bit. If you want to create an elven cleric archer, you can just make an elf cleric, and multiclass ranger. Or create an elf ranger, and multiclass cleric. You'll have to split your ability scores, but that's not really a crisis. If you're spending a lot of resources multiclassing a cleric into a ranger, dexterity will give you as much benefit as charisma would have given the straight cleric. I suspect that this doesn't really satisfy you, because you want the look and feel of a weapon being a backup for limited use magic. You want the weapon to be the bread and butter, generic attack, and the magic to be the big splash. Multiclassing doesn't really do that. In response, there isn't much I can say, except that running things your way would deny ME the archetypes I like, so maybe this conflict isn't really resolvable. Overall, though, I think that making at wills into encounter abilities in order to force people to spread their stats more and take basic attacks is fundamentally a bad idea. It doesn't undo the repetition problem, it makes it worse by forcing you to repeat your basic attack instead of your two or three at wills. It encourages stat spread, but that's not an intrinsic good from where I'm sitting. It denies access to as many archetypes as it encourages. It makes combat less tactical (even if my fighter has used up every encounter and daily power he has, I can still try to maneuver for a cleave or shift people around with footwork lure). And an easier solution for the lost archetypes exists. Use encounter powers to encourage them. The encounter power system and the weapon/multiclass system actually provide a great framework for adding unusual things to classes, like archery to a cleric. It wouldn't be tough to draft a multiclass path just to make this archetype available. It would do a lot less violence to the system to make these corner case character concepts available via feats and optional encounter powers than to rework the math. [/QUOTE]
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