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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6624102" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>This is pretty much what I got out of the guides too. They are each written from a certain point of view, with a certain author's particular experience in mind. I found that MANY times powers that were marked purple, or even black, were actually perfectly effective and good solid choices for specific characters. If you already have 3 powers that do basically X, then a purple power that does Y instead, when Y adds some other useful dimension to your character, can make perfectly good sense instead of taking gold power number 4 that does X. </p><p></p><p>I would never build to formula from a guide, except maybe to create some pre-gens for a one-shot or something where I just wanted good solid generic PCs that the players can quickly pick up the primary shtick for. What the guides are useful for is pointing out different ensembles of useful feat/power/item/etc constellations that you can work into your character. They are also clearly excellent at setting out the basic parameters of a class and what stuff 'just works'. </p><p></p><p>So, when I build a 4e character I usually do look at the relevant guide, just to see if there are some things that it can tell me which I might not already know about. I could care less if they say some stuff is bad and its on my character sheet. Beyond that, sometimes the goal isn't optimization. I built a half-orc ruthless ruffian for example, which every guide basically says "don't even bother" about. It was awesome, did exactly what it was designed to do. Maybe I could do a bit more damage and whatever some other way, so what? It fit with what I wanted and pretty much every power I used was 'purple' because nobody really ever evaluated the powers in that context.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6624102, member: 82106"] This is pretty much what I got out of the guides too. They are each written from a certain point of view, with a certain author's particular experience in mind. I found that MANY times powers that were marked purple, or even black, were actually perfectly effective and good solid choices for specific characters. If you already have 3 powers that do basically X, then a purple power that does Y instead, when Y adds some other useful dimension to your character, can make perfectly good sense instead of taking gold power number 4 that does X. I would never build to formula from a guide, except maybe to create some pre-gens for a one-shot or something where I just wanted good solid generic PCs that the players can quickly pick up the primary shtick for. What the guides are useful for is pointing out different ensembles of useful feat/power/item/etc constellations that you can work into your character. They are also clearly excellent at setting out the basic parameters of a class and what stuff 'just works'. So, when I build a 4e character I usually do look at the relevant guide, just to see if there are some things that it can tell me which I might not already know about. I could care less if they say some stuff is bad and its on my character sheet. Beyond that, sometimes the goal isn't optimization. I built a half-orc ruthless ruffian for example, which every guide basically says "don't even bother" about. It was awesome, did exactly what it was designed to do. Maybe I could do a bit more damage and whatever some other way, so what? It fit with what I wanted and pretty much every power I used was 'purple' because nobody really ever evaluated the powers in that context. [/QUOTE]
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