So, about defenses aka. PHB2 defenses feats

[James McMurray]

Having run a game from 21st to 25th, I can say that it seems to me that the epic defense feats are overkill, and could change a sometimes challenging game to a cakewalk.

While it's true that the epic monsters hit really easily, that didn't make for hard fights, just ones where things happened. In over 40 battles, some involving PCs with less than their level in gear, no PC was ever killed. Only a few times was anyone dropped to 0 hit points, and they were almost instantly brought back up by the leader or their own abilities.

If they'd had +2 to +4 on their defenses it would have been even less dangerous for them.

I can't speak as much to paragon level. We played a paragon campaign from 11th to (IIRC) 14th, and it seemed pretty tough, but the GM was of the type who loves to shut off PC abilities and provide terrain that hinders the party but helps (or is at least ignored by) the monsters.

We just started a hero level game at 4th level (4 PCs in Thunderspire Mountain). So far it's been a wiff fest on the part of the monsters. There's only been 3 fights though, so it may not be indicative of how the game will go in the long run.

 

[Iron Sky]

We've played from level 1 to our current level of 13, and I would say the fights get easier for the most part, not harder. Sure the monsters throw out more status effects, but the players do even more.

Let me preface this post with the fact that our characters are rolled, not point buy. Several of us started with 2 (or 4 in the case of our fighter) 18s. That said, the DM stopped throwing any encounters lower than N+1 at us long ago.


To take last night's game I played in for example, we had three combats.

Fight 1 vs Solo Huge Spider. 3 rounds. By the end of the first round it had the following status effects: Quarry, Curse, Cold vulnerability, -6 AC, Stunned, Blind, Divine Challenge. Round 2: Quarry, Curse, Cold vulnerability, Dazed, Weakened. Round 3: Dead. It got off 2 attacks, 1 of which missed. Our party lost 1 surge.

Fight 2 was complicated. Split party, traps, archers behind arrow slits 50' away... Cost us about 6-8 surges total amongst the party for 1 wounded goblin and 2 dead chull?(giant lobster thingies). This was probably the toughest encounter we've run into since we hit Paragon.

Fight 3 vs 2 Shadow Oozes(Elites). 3 rounds. Second round, one was dazed, the other was stunned(and dazed and weakened, amongst other things). Third round both died. Total party cost: 3 surges.


In 13 levels of 4e, I'd say status effects make the combat, not damage - and this only gets more true as the levels go up. If the PCs get their status effects in place first, the fight is easy, often a cakewalk. If the enemy gets theirs in place, it might be difficult. In my experience, fight difficulty is largely determined by the number of monsters that impose status effects.

Large enemy HP do little to make fights longer, unless that monster is also effective at dazing/weakening/etc the party. Few monsters have hit hard enough to make outright damage the primary threat.


Anecdotes aside, as I'm about to start a campaign myself, I'm trying to figure out what to do with all this. The idea of a monster hitting on a 2 seems wrong somehow, but in fights last night we had the paladin and rogue both hit an enemy elite with a 3... and this without Expertise (we just got PHP2, making level 14's feat choice an obvious one for most of us).


With these defense feats at least, they aren't auto-picks for most of us.
My ranger picks feats with one consideration: damage. Used to have TWD, but ditched it at Paragon(when our two defenders joined).
The warlock picks any feats that augment her control powers or damage.
The Cleric has most of the Dragonborn feats and a smattering of random others. He does have light shield prof for defense.
All three of us have the Wintertouched-Lasting Frost combo.
The rogue selects feats based on mobility and damage.
The Fighter picks mostly damage feats. He has plate prof and spec, but that's about it for defenses.
The Paladin has shield spec. The rest are pally feats and a random smattering of others(hammer rhythm, dwarven weapon prof, etc).


Even at +4 untyped, I don't see myself getting the epic feats with my ranger. Maybe will since it's 6 points behind my AC (and will be about 8 points behind by Epic). In a well balanced, tactical party, everyone doesn't need good defenses.

If I get hit by a 2 by some big nasty controller solo, it doesn't matter if he never attacks me 'cause the pally has him locked down the whole fight. The defenders may pick them up, but I don't see our leader or the striker trio more than cherry-picking on or two.

Expertise is a different matter, however...

 

[jbear]

Lol, I ask myself what a whiff-fest is. Easy for PC's ? Or hard?
I haven't played at epic levels or even paragon to be able to contribute intelligently to the discussion. However, reading Karensdads description of the grind in store in the future for what should be piece-of-cake encounters, I groan inwardly.

Although monsters being able to hit the PC's isn't too problematic, from my point of view. I don't want my players having to deal with hour long boring fights. So I ask myself this:

When you calculate damage, eg. 3[w] + STR and you use a +3 Maul, the plus three is not multiplied by 3. It's just added as a straight 3 at the end. However if it was included in the calculation of the weapons damage, suddenly it's doing 6d6 +9 +STR.
It seems like a fairly simple and logical calculation, and perhaps would contribute to slaying monsters with lots of HP, and contribute to reducing grind when the entire group is doing it round by round

Opinions?

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

@AbdulAlhazred
You still talking about diffrent thing that I'am. Roleplaying isn't topic here. We talking about facts. The fact that wizrds gives us overpowered feats that fix the math, and the fact that was bad idee. Thus I give my proposition how to fix that issue, by giving this feats for free, couse this feats are overpowered/must-have/disturbed balance of the game/make the game as it suppose to be from the beginnig.

And what I am saying is that role-playing is a FACT of the game. I can take a feat that raises one of my NADs by 4 OR I can take a feat that gives me a new skill or a +2 or in a few cases +3 on some skill rolls (as an example, there are other examples I could give).

Now that extra skill bonus could WELL be the difference for my party to succeed in a complex level + 4 critical skill challenge that means success or failure of the entire adventure. Just like the outcome of a battle could be. Or it could be the skill bonus I need to do a stunt that knocks the monster into the lava and wins the battle.

It is not clear cut that the NAD bonus feat is always superior. It WILL be superior in a battle where there are no options except beating on the opponent with powers. But if you design good skill challenge encounters and good stunting opportunities and similar things into encounters then PCs will have a choice of things they want to use their skills on.

In my campaign it would be just as critically fatal for a party not to be able to pull off difficult athletics feats or acrobatics, or knowledge checks or anything else even when the DC is +4 levels or more hard.

I understand what you guys are talking about, and YES I have actually designed games, several in fact. Sure, nobody gets every bug out a game, not in the first cut and probably not in the 40th edition when you're talking about an RPG where people do all crazy stuff with the rules.

I just think it should be a choice for the player. Buff his NADs or buff his skills or whatever else. Can't have it all. Yup some specific monsters at some levels will have powers that are NASTY effective against some PCs. Overall the PCs seem to be winning out, even sans using more combat bonus feats. The cyclops example is exactly a perfect example of what I'm talking about though. It is really a pretty balanced encounter. Maybe the PCs have to burn a bit extra resources for your liking, but I can show you encounter mixes at ANY level that are like that. No game designer could EVER balance all possible combinations and it would be foolishness to try.

However, what if one of the PCs with a super high DC skill check could have toppled one of the death titans off a cliff? Maybe he would succeed on that if really put his effort into building his character for skills and not quite so much for melee. Maybe he could fool the titans and get by without wasting a big fight, or find a way to navigate around them. IF the adventure designer is really creative, those options will exist and characters can be built that are VERY unoptimized for full on combat, but still huge assets to the party.

Sadly most adventures don't cater to that, it is a lot harder to write than Room 27, 3 death titans, carnage follows...

 

[James McMurray]

Lol, I ask myself what a whiff-fest is. Easy for PC's ? Or hard?

Whiffing is missing. The monsters were having a whiff-fest, by which I meant they were missing left and right. Part of it was probably just probability though. For instance, the one 5th level monster they fought never hit anyone, while the 3rd level goblins that were with him hit several times (for much more damage because of their rage ability).

I haven't played at epic levels or even paragon to be able to contribute intelligently to the discussion. However, reading Karensdads description of the grind in store in the future for what should be piece-of-cake encounters, I groan inwardly.

Except in the case of solos and insubstantial creatures (or heaven forbid the one insubstantial solo I used) there wasn't much in the way of grinding for our epic game. The players usually focused their attacks on one or two monsters, and the critters dropped fairly quickly. I also had a house rule for minions, and used them quite a bit, which made it so that monsters fell faster.

When you calculate damage, eg. 3[w] + STR and you use a +3 Maul, the plus three is not multiplied by 3. It's just added as a straight 3 at the end. However if it was included in the calculation of the weapons damage, suddenly it's doing 6d6 +9 +STR.
It seems like a fairly simple and logical calculation, and perhaps would contribute to slaying monsters with lots of HP, and contribute to reducing grind when the entire group is doing it round by round

Opinions?

You'll hurt the non-weapon users, most of whom already do lower damage (though with more secondary effects and area attacks). What about instead:

• At-Wills work as normal.
• Encounter powers double the normal bonuses from feats, attributes, and enhancements.
• Dailies triple the normal bonuses from feats, attributes, and enhancements.

It affects all the classes equally, so (among other things) means the Warlock, who normally does the least damage of the 3 core strikers, isn't doubly hurt. It also puts a limit on the characters' ability to output massive amounts of damage.

 

[jbear]

Whiffing is missing. The monsters were having a whiff-fest, by which I meant they were missing left and right. Part of it was probably just probability though. For instance, the one 5th level monster they fought never hit anyone, while the 3rd level goblins that were with him hit several times (for much more damage because of their rage ability).



Except in the case of solos and insubstantial creatures (or heaven forbid the one insubstantial solo I used) there wasn't much in the way of grinding for our epic game. The players usually focused their attacks on one or two monsters, and the critters dropped fairly quickly. I also had a house rule for minions, and used them quite a bit, which made it so that monsters fell faster.



You'll hurt the non-weapon users, most of whom already do lower damage (though with more secondary effects and area attacks). What about instead:

• At-Wills work as normal.
• Encounter powers double the normal bonuses from feats, attributes, and enhancements.
• Dailies triple the normal bonuses from feats, attributes, and enhancements.

It affects all the classes equally, so (among other things) means the Warlock, who normally does the least damage of the 3 core strikers, isn't doubly hurt. It also puts a limit on the characters' ability to output massive amounts of damage.

yes, I see what you mean. The casters usually have set damage, so their enhancement bonus wouldn't be multiplied. Doubling or tripling feat damge, enhancement damage and attributes (you mean 3x STR? in the case of daily powers? seems off hand like it could get pretty crazy with the damage and might make it too easy. GOliaths +2 with two handed weapons x3, +3 axe x3 and STR x3: Around +36 dmg could be easily achieved around lv 16 on delivering a Daily Attack. Quite a bit more than I was thinking.

But the idea that the weapons or the implements enhancement bonus was multiplied by the number of dice rolled. In the case of weapons by the number of [w] dmg inflicted (so as to avoid 2d6 mauls having enhancement counted twice). So if a Warlocks daily did 3d10 the enhancement would be counted 3 times, as if each d10 was 1[w].

This would not affect At Wills, generally because At Wills usually only deal 1[w] dmg.
Or 1dSomething dmg.

Anyway, this is getting off the topic and a bit more complicated than I originally thought.

 

[Elric]

In 13 levels of 4e, I'd say status effects make the combat, not damage - and this only gets more true as the levels go up. If the PCs get their status effects in place first, the fight is easy, often a cakewalk. If the enemy gets theirs in place, it might be difficult. In my experience, fight difficulty is largely determined by the number of monsters that impose status effects.

Large enemy HP do little to make fights longer, unless that monster is also effective at dazing/weakening/etc the party. Few monsters have hit hard enough to make outright damage the primary threat.

I think you're right that monsters with status effects are stronger. I haven't played at epic, but looking at level 15-25 creatures in the MM I'm struck by how much better some of the ones with status effects or other special abilities are. This is because monsters aren't given enough damage to compensate for not inflicting status effects and/or aren't penalized enough for inflicting status effects or having other special abilities.

Look at the Ghaele of Winter (Eladrin) at level 21, for example. It's pretty fragile as artillery, but it has a (edit- minor action) Close Burst 3 attack at +23 vs. Will that Dazes for the entire duration of the encounter. Using just PH bonuses to FRW, +23 at 25th level is enough to hit a PCs strong FRW defense reasonably often (at level 25, without feats, a 35-36 strong FRW defense seems typical, while a weak FRW defense would be around 29). It can potentially use this attack multiple times.

Imagine adding it to Karinsdad's Death Titan encounter. If a party doesn't know to kill it ASAP (since it flies, this could be hard for a party without serious single target ranged attacks), and it uses this power once when it can catch a few PCs in it, that will make the encounter significantly tougher. What about an extra Giant Mummy instead (level 21 as well)? Not so much.

And what I am saying is that role-playing is a FACT of the game. I can take a feat that raises one of my NADs by 4 OR I can take a feat that gives me a new skill or a +2 or in a few cases +3 on some skill rolls (as an example, there are other examples I could give).

Now that extra skill bonus could WELL be the difference for my party to succeed in a complex level + 4 critical skill challenge that means success or failure of the entire adventure. Just like the outcome of a battle could be. Or it could be the skill bonus I need to do a stunt that knocks the monster into the lava and wins the battle.

It is not clear cut that the NAD bonus feat is always superior. It WILL be superior in a battle where there are no options except beating on the opponent with powers. But if you design good skill challenge encounters and good stunting opportunities and similar things into encounters then PCs will have a choice of things they want to use their skills on.

Given that Epic FRW gives a +4 bonus to one FRW, Robust Defenses gives +2 to all three, and pre-PH II a character's feats options gave +2 to one FRW defense, would you then conclude that the Great Fortitude line of feats was terrible, since it was 1/3 to 1/2 of the bonus of the current line of feats? So the PH II feats are needed just to make boosting FRW competitive with Skill Training and Skill Focus?

More specifically, how large of a bonus would Epic FRW and Robust Defenses have to give before you concluded that their bonuses were too large?

 

[Runestar]

Given that Epic FRW gives a +4 bonus to one FRW, Robust Defenses gives +2 to all three, and pre-PH II a character's feats options gave +2 to one FRW defense, would you then conclude that the Great Fortitude line of feats was terrible, since it was 1/3 to 1/2 of the bonus of the current line of feats?

+2 at paragon seems fair (at the time when you are first eligible for it), though I am not sure this bonus should scale at epic (bear in mind that you could easily retrain iron will into epic will (or at least, robust defenses), if you are starved for feats and cannot afford both of them.

So at paragon, you could take the 3 defense boosters and retrain them into their epic versions (there is no reason in keeping the former 3, when 1 epic feat replicates the benefits of all 3, nor do they stack anyways). There aren't that many good or worthwhile epic feats at the moment, so your choices are pretty much made for you.

4 feats for +6 to all defenses. Seems reasonable, too good in fact that I can see many builds wanting them.

 

[DracoSuave]

To make my point a little better:

You have people using math (but not actual play) to suggest that the game is hard at high levels, and you have people using play to suggest that the game is not hard at high levels.

Now, difficulty is experienced through play, and so evidence garnered through play is a lot more indicative of problems than mathematical theorycraft.

That's my point. You can -say- there's a problem because 'the numbers are off' but if people actually playing at that high level aren't finding things unduly difficult, then there -is- no problem. The math might not seem to be 'elegant' and 'properly symetrical' but only if the game is actually difficult to play at high level does a problem really exist.

Scientific method, people. The theory-craft says it is difficult, now it's time to observe to support this thesis. If the observation does not support the thesis, you throw out the thesis and start again.

Even if the 'math says otherwise.'

My thesis is that the 'math' does not break down, per se, but that the values of the math are less important with the more powers and effects and tactics you have at your disposal making up for the shortfall.

 

[Bayuer]

@AbdulAlhazred
Skill feat is just only pseudo-roleplay feat option in game. Linguist may be better and that's it. We don't talk about skill use couse it will need another thread when we can discuss about it's broken ST ie. Skill Challange. Stop making an examples of roleplaying combat consequences, couse it's not the fact, and almost none use such a fights in they games, couse 4E is mostly about attack rolls and damage rolls.

In 13 levels of 4e, I'd say status effects make the combat, not damage - and this only gets more true as the levels go up.

That's true. But... If DMG don't have enough experience and don't know the game math etc he will make some mistakes when he design the enoers. He will put to weak monster and thus the challange will be trival (and most of the DMs do such). Guidlines from DMG are to weak, but they are for non-optimized roleplaying parties I think. In other hand when a such DMG want to make a threat to party he will make deadly encounter mixing monsters thats combat effects work very nice.

The both can be true and in both cases having better defenses is needed. In first example it will not change anything. In second it will give players just fair chances to survive.

One more thing. Don't use n=0 or n+1 encounters as guidlines for challenging fights. Don't do so with solos and too many elities, couse they fail to make they designed role. The true is the more monsters in fight, the more challenging it is. One example here:
- Throw on 20 level party this encounter (we will be using easy Wolf Pack (7 skirmishers of level n-4:
- We got 7 Kuo-Toa Monitors (lvl 16 Skirmisher)
They attack is +19 vs. REF and make you stunned (encounter power) (save ends)
Now let's look at playres DEF:
Highest - 32 (13 on dice to hit), Middle - 29 (10 on dice to hit, Lowest - 25 (6 on dice to hit).
Anyone can easly say. They DEF are quite fine, thus this are monsters 4lvl behind the PCs! But there are 7 of them, and this fight is EASY! Make Let's make them the same lvl +23 vs. REF.
Highest -32 (9 on dice to hit), Middle - 29 (6 on dice to hit), Lowest - 25 (2 on dice to hit). Guidlines tells us that there 5 monsters of level n (the same as team level) is standard fight. You can see that someone with realy weak REF (one example: barbarian) will have a though time in this fight. Other will be hurt too. Only to ones with high REF will have some fun from game!

Well I did an easy/standard fight above. Imagine what will be if this will be a hard fight on n+4 level with controller or artillery as buckup. TPK.

4 feats for +6 to all defenses. Seems reasonable, too good in fact that I can see many builds wanting them.

And that's the point! The feats are too good to just pretend they are not exist, and I will take Linguist on 25 level couse I'm roleplayer.

You have people using math (but not actual play) to suggest that the game is hard at high levels, and you have people using play to suggest that the game is not hard at high levels.

You think we are some idiots here, gathering to just make some teory fiction posts? Man... This problem wasn't on topic until them from two reasons:
- Not many people are playing high paragon/epic tier games and even if, not everybody pay attention to game math etc. The most players just take what a DM gives to them and they are happy, thus is very good! Couse the game is good to them.
- We didn't have PHB2 feats until now, thus not many people did math crunch and state the math is broken. Now we have evidences about this!

And I must dissapoint you. I was playing almost all levels till then (just not late epic games) and I can tell you my feelings that if my DM will not take my advices seriously he will slain our party many times. I just pointed him that this isn't tactic game DM vs. players, but the cinematic game when we fight and monster are to make the game fun. He stopped using encounters as I gave as an example above and make the fights still challenging but not devastating. Good DMG can always make TPK easily if he knows rules, but this aren't n, or n+1 fights (but this can still happen, go above my encounter example).

Standard fight may look fine. Players will surive them withou any problems, but monster hitting on 2 on dice isn't "well he need that, couse the fights are to easy". It's just a terrible design step and math bug.