I think we're done with 4E

[Plane Sailing]

Hey guys - we're getting a bit of snarkiness arising. Please don't go there, OK?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Seriously?

Your PCs would take 8-12 rounds vs 5 of these guys:

Elf Scout
HP 39
AC 16, Fort 13, Ref 15, Will 13

I think a level 4 Rogue, alone, would kill them all in 8-12 rounds.

Why wouldn't I be serious?

Since the elf scout is a level 2 skirmisher (and five skirmishers together isn't exactly a good combination) I'm not sure why you put this up as a proposal.

Recent fights were:
7x 4th level PCs against 1 tiefling heretic, 2 spined devils & 3 orc beserkers (6th level encounter), 8 rounds.

7x 4th level PCs against 3 Duegar Guards, 2 Arblalesters and a Duergar Theurge (5th level encounter), 10 rounds.

7x4th level PCs vs Ogre Savage, 2 Duegar Scouts, Duegar Theurge (4th level encounter) 9 rounds.

Cheers

 

[Harlekin]

Why wouldn't I be serious?

Since the elf scout is a level 2 skirmisher (and five skirmishers together isn't exactly a good combination) I'm not sure why you put this up as a proposal.

Recent fights were:
7x 4th level PCs against 1 tiefling heretic, 2 spined devils & 3 orc beserkers (6th level encounter), 8 rounds.

7x 4th level PCs against 3 Duegar Guards, 2 Arblalesters and a Duergar Theurge (5th level encounter), 10 rounds.

7x4th level PCs vs Ogre Savage, 2 Duegar Scouts, Duegar Theurge (4th level encounter) 9 rounds.

Cheers

That sounds about right. I think the game is designed for combat to take 6-12 rounds. However, I like several of the strategies suggested on this thread to shorten fights with an inevitable outcome.

 

[Felon]

From who, though?

I mean, my rogue was doing ~20 damage with At-Wills at level one. Now, the character was pretty well designed for damage - but most Strikers should be easily doing more than 20 damage with Encounter powers from the start, and with At-Wills by Paragon level.

Even a character of a non-damage class, without a damage-oriented build, by Paragon level, is looking at ~15 damage from At-Wills - and a rogue or ranger is looking at ~25-30 damage At-Wills, and even higher from Encounters.

I mean, if you want to say that 20 damage is high from Heroic-level At-Will powers, I'll agree with that - it isn't impossible, but requires some pretty solid number-crunching. But by Paragon level it is par for the course - and Encounter powers are easily able to hit that mark in the Heroic tier.

By your numbers, the expected damage is 20.5, so he will deal 21 or more damage with exactly half of his damage rolls. How is that an extreme?

OK, it seems my statement about characters being lucky to do 20 pts of damage bears some qualfiication.

I'm referring collectively to the damage output from the parade of characters I've seen within the half-dozen 4e parties that I've played in, ranging from levels 1-12, of which only a few have been tricked-out rangers and rogues (and that fighter doing +26 damage per hit is conspicuously absent altogether). If encounters were built using 3e's design of a 1-monster/4-players ratio, I could see only focusing on characters whose role it is to close down opponents and just not counting the healers and buffers and mezzers and meat shields.

But 4e's design is 1-monster/1-player, with all classes designed to contribute damage. Now you ought to count everybody, not just the total badarses. And yeah, some of those characters roll single digits on damage with rather alarming frequency.

As to the warlock getting his 20 points of damage from his encounter power, I'm thinking he's "lucky" to get it because A) it's an encounter power that might be discarded on an all-too-likely miss, and B) that curse damage isn't a given, as I find that in practice it's not all that easy for a ranged attacker to get the enemy he wants to attack closer to him than any other enemy (of course, you can just shoot at the nearest target of opportunity to get the damage bonus, but that's often just playing into the enemy's hands).

 

[MerricB]

Why wouldn't I be serious?

Since the elf scout is a level 2 skirmisher (and five skirmishers together isn't exactly a good combination) I'm not sure why you put this up as a proposal.

Recent fights were:
7x 4th level PCs against 1 tiefling heretic, 2 spined devils & 3 orc beserkers (6th level encounter), 8 rounds.

7x 4th level PCs against 3 Duegar Guards, 2 Arblalesters and a Duergar Theurge (5th level encounter), 10 rounds.

7x4th level PCs vs Ogre Savage, 2 Duegar Scouts, Duegar Theurge (4th level encounter) 9 rounds.

Hmm...
Ogre Savage - level 8 brute, AC 19, hp 111 (xp 350)
2 Scouts - level 4 lurker, AC 19, hp 48 (xp 175)
1 Duergar Theurge - level 5 controller, AC 20, hp 64 (xp 200)

That looks like a level 2 encounter to me (7 PCs, avg 128 XP/PC).


1 tiefling heretic - level 6 artillery, AC 20, HP 59 (xp 250)
2 spined devils - level 6 skirmisher, AC 20, HP 70 (xp 250)
3 orc berserkers - level 4 brute, AC 15, HP 66 (xp 175)

(182 XP/PC, level 4-5 encounter).


The ACs of a lot of those monsters are high enough to cause a lot of problems to low level PCs; mind you, those berserkers should have gone down pretty quickly.

Cheers!

 

[dagger]

As a player I am fed up with 4e already, but I like to run it so far. I absolutely HATE running mid to high level 3/3.5, but I like to play characters under the right DM.

(man I am screwed)


I am going to try a revolution and get the group to try 1e AD&D again...already got one player on my side.

 

[LostSoul]

Why wouldn't I be serious?

Since the elf scout is a level 2 skirmisher (and five skirmishers together isn't exactly a good combination) I'm not sure why you put this up as a proposal.

Whoops, I got the level of the elf scout horribly, horribly wrong. Sorry about that.

I am about to get into the duergar keep in Thunderspire, and the PCs just hit level 6. We'll see how they do.

 

[Shadowsong666]

I hope you mean 26 including weapon base damage and not [w]+26. Still, I would be interested in that math.

No, just +26 damage without weapon damage.

Well the math is easy. Lets use a dragonborn glaive fighter.

+6 strength bonus on level 11
+3 magic weapon
+2 weapon focus
+6 power attack
+9 blood-claw weapon

thats 2d4+26 damage with a -2 attack penalty thx to power attack.
Now lets assume your group has a cleric and this fighter(mc cleric) and they Righteous Brand each other every round for a +6 attack bonus (getting +4 cause of power attack). And we are not even taking about possible AOO cause of CS etc. he gets in combat too.

cleric does the same damage with the same attack bonus.

Take a wizard (11th level) which is a controller and is specialized on thunderwave, arcane reach with pushing equipment and high wis, mc cleric. He does close blast 4, 1d6+13 damage per target and pushes them 6 squares. If he gets the blast right, he should hit 2-3 targets letting him do plenty of damage.
+6 intelligence
+5 wand of thunder +3 (+2 due to property)
+2 raging storm

the bugbear brutal scoundrel rogue (11th level) gets combat advantage every round cause of flanked, dazed, stunned, prone enemies...

+6 dexterity
+6 subtle weapon +3 on CA
+4 brutal scoundrel
+2 weapon focus
+4 power attack
+1 two-weapon fighting

So he does 1d6+23 damage +3d8 Sneak attack damage using piercing strike with a -2 to penalty to attack, but with CA (+2 to attack) against the targets REF defense... guess what? he hits many times... and has a very high armor class.

So, really, i don't see a problem going over 20 damage per attack on paragon level. Its so easy.

 

[Jack99]

I know that you conflate what you don't understand with what's untrue, and that you conflate snideness with wit. In general, your comments seem to exhibit a presumption of indisputable authority that you don't actually possess.

I've played and run lots of 4e at heroic and paragon tiers. The consensus of my group is that 20 points is pretty ample for a non-daily.

There was absolutely neither snideness nor wit in my post. And since you claim that I speak of things I do not know, let me present my facts.

My 14th level rogue does 1d8+3d8+10+5 (average 33) on a basic attack, with sneak. If he had spent 0 feats on improving his damage, he would still be doing 1d4+3d6+8+5 (average 25).

Now granted, not all characters will be doing that kind of damage. But assuming the ranger and warlock spend just one or two feats on damage (since it is their job, after all), all three strikers will be doing >20 damage regularly on at-wills, and just about every time on encounter powers. Hardly what I would call "extreme".

Fighters can get there easily too, with a lot of feats/items to improve their basic/OA attack. Now granted, it's a little harder since they do not have all that extra striker damage, but they usually use a larger die, which helps them out a bit. The larger die certainly ensures that at least their encounter powers go over 20 in average.

Example: A fighter will have around +12 damage without spending feats on anything special, and with just a appropriate magic weapon. Add potent challenge feat and those bracers, and you are looking at around +17 damage when using the combat challenge. With a 1d8 or higher die, you are looking at 20+ damage for a basic attack.

So, while my comments are made from anecdotal evidence, so were yours certainly.

 

[Plane Sailing]

That looks like a level 2 encounter to me (7 PCs, avg 128 XP/PC).

(etc)

Thanks for doing the maths for me - I didn't have a DMG handy and couldn't remember the 'real' way of calculating encounter level, so I just pulled it out of the adventure where it was sitting.

Of course, this suggests that if the encounters were boosted up to actually be 'level 4' encounters then my combats would have been quite a bit longer!

Cheers