Working the game

[N8Ball]

[FONT=&quot]Switching classes to warlord is an unlikely option, since the DM has built an epic storyline about a religious conflict based on our choice of classes. Besides, my friend is clearly interested playing a character who wields magic so I don’t think she’d enjoy being a warlord. The alternate cleric builds you’ve suggested are all good ideas, but my main problem is figuring out how to get A. to enact them without seeming like a controlling jerk. Now I’m realizing this is more of an etiquette issue and probably shouldn’t have been posted on the rules board, but thanks anyway for the replies.[/FONT]

One thing that our DM allowed is an in-class respec at level 6 so that we could correct all the poor character decisions and inefficiencies we made along the way since we were all new to 4E at the time.

We got 6 levels to learn, then get right with the game system and start kicking enemies teeth in. Every one of us was very much pleased with our respec characters after we got to shed some of our poorer decisions.

 

[Destil]

Yes, we're having fun, though maybe a bit less so than at low levels, when we were all missing attacks together.

It's funny that this has turned into a discussion of rolling's drawbacks, because I think the scores we started out with were pretty normal. A.’s rolls were fine (almost all in the 11 to 14 range), but since then she’s been spreading plusses around rather than focusing on the development of one or two skills.

4E pretty much assumes at least one 18 after racial adjustments. Some classes can get away with some leeway here (Fighter, Avenger), most really can't. The math just makes this assumption.

While I know it could be a pretty effective way to build a character in older editions a bunch of 14s is a very mechanically poor build in 4E. It's no longer 'pretty good', and with point buy as the (unspoken default) assumption, it's likewise not really normal. For that matter your scores are pretty weird, but it's not game breaking because of how they're laid out and your class (could be dangerous if Con and Wis were switched, though).

Note that a 'brainy' cleric isn't a bad thing at all, since they don't get much from Dex...