Armor Specialization (Plate)

[Dice4Hire]

WotC changed CC within the Compendium to a Combat Challenge POWER. Obviously, they want it to work via my interpretation and want the monsters to know how CC works once they are affected by it.

I did not know about the compendium, but the CC seems one of the clearest 'Enemies know hte consequences of their actions' in the game.

 

[KarinsDad]

The fighter using surges or not has little to no bearing on how much the leader heals: leader heals are restricted per encounter. The daily resource here is surges (with some powers being notable exceptions). If the fighter is ending on 8 surges while the rest of the party is on 0 to 2, then assuming each extra surge worth of damage he takes is equivalent to removing a surge worth of damage from another character (which isn't true: defender surges tend to be larger than those of others), the party could have gone another encounter before running out.

Note the word you used: assuming. The fact is that this is not necessarily true. If the Fighter just gets missed because he has a few extra bonus to AC, NOBODY in the group would have taken the damage and no healing surge would have been needed.

The fighter's counterattack is usually only enough to make the decision between low-hp and high hp targets even, assuming close defenses. Once the defenses start to shift, you need to make up for that AS WELL.

As the fighter's damage dealing ability goes down, he not only becomes less effective at counterattacking: his value as a target goes down as well. So not only does the wizard have less hitpoints, but each hitpoint holds more value.

As a totally non-muddy example: we have two combatants. One has 5000 hitpoints and does 1 point of damage per attack. The other has 1 hitpoint and deals 5000 points of damage per attack. Which do you kill first to maximise your chances of winning?

A first level Fighter can easily do an average of 8.5 points of damage on a successful hit. How much can that really be increased with feats? Maybe 1 for a superior weapon. 1 for Weapon Focus. Certain races can get a slightly higher damage bonus, but wouldn't both the offensive and defensive fighter of that race often take those types of feats?

Fighters already do decent damage. If they concentrate on defense, sure they might have a slightly lesser offense. But, it's not 1 vs. 5000. You are exaggerating well beyond what is reasonable for discussion. Show real numbers. What percentage of damage can a Fighter lose if he concentrates on defense?

If one Fighter averages 10.5 points of damage and another averages 8.5 points of damage, how does the monster know without metagaming that one averages higher if they both hit the monster for 9 points of damage?

Personally we and our DMs reveal defenses when you attack them. It just makes the game flow that much quicker.

Even if you don't do that though, defenses get pinned down pretty quickly. And if you're talking about large differences (ie - the sort that will result from prioritising defense on a fighter and giving him all the best defensive gear vs prioritising other roles) then is it really metagaming?

If the DM is making NPC decisions based on PC defenses before the PC is even attacked, of course it is metagaming. Even after it attacks, the monster should often have little extra knowledge. For example, missing on a 3 or hitting on an 18 should effectively tell the monster nothing.

Usually it comes pretty close, but a good deal depends on how hard the fighter actually hits.

So, the monster KNOWS that the Fighter rolled a 1 when he did 12 points of damage?

The monster can gauge how hard the Fighter hits, but it should not be able to do so until it gets hit a few times. The first hit at 20 points might be a weak attack, or it might have been a critical. How would the monster know the difference? Of course the DM knows, but if the DM uses that information, he is metagaming.

 

[DracoSuave]

The proper comparison isn't Spec: Plate to Spec: Scale. A more accurate comparison is for Spec: Plate to Spec: Shield. The reason is because if you're -in- plate, then, by default, you're going high defense Fighter, or are a Paladin. If this is the case, then the comparison of characters is between Sword and Board Defender, and Two-Hander Defender.

So, the Sword and Board Defender gets the better defensive feat to support the better defensive build. The Two-Hander gets the second tier one.

 

[Regicide]

So, the monsters DPR adds 5 and then effectively doubles. That's a lot more than the 8.2 damage that he's taking back.

If the monsters are counting DPR but ignoring the fact that they're pretty obviously going to die or are very likely to lose the fight then the PCs are fighting Rain Man.

Anything beyond "attack the closest target" is too much for a monster that doesn't "run and get help as soon as they spot the party."

 

[Saeviomagy]

Note the word you used: assuming. The fact is that this is not necessarily true. If the Fighter just gets missed because he has a few extra bonus to AC, NOBODY in the group would have taken the damage and no healing surge would have been needed.

But if the fighter has the extra points of AC because the cleric doesn't, then the fighter would have been hit more and the cleric less, which is an improvement.

Fighters already do decent damage. If they concentrate on defense, sure they might have a slightly lesser offense. But, it's not 1 vs. 5000. You are exaggerating well beyond what is reasonable for discussion. Show real numbers. What percentage of damage can a Fighter lose if he concentrates on defense?

The 5000 to one example was merely to illustrate the concept, and even then you seem to have missed my point: the two guys with 5000 hp and 1 damage vs 5000 damage and 1 hp are more representing "someone big and tough and offensively weak" and "someone small and squishy and offensively strong". As you reduce the numbers and difference, the conclusion stays the same: kill the squishy dangerous guy first. Everything that a defender does should be aimed at making that a bad choice.

Real numbers? By not using a shield, using dual strike as your at-will, choosing a PP, ED and multiclass that focus on damage, and boosting wisdom and strength (and a bunch of other things), you end up with an average damage per round of at least 150 points. Fighter A does around 30 points of damage in a round, while optimised-for-damage fighter B does 180. If you want breakdowns, just go visit the WoTC optimisation forum.

On a more practical level, you can trade +2 ac and +2 reflex to boost your [w] from an average of 5.5 to 7 (or from 4.5 to 5.5, depending on what weapons you like). You can trade 4 hitpoints and 1 hit point per surge for +2 to hit with opportunity attacks. You can trade +1 ac for +1 damage (per tier).

If one Fighter averages 10.5 points of damage and another averages 8.5 points of damage, how does the monster know without metagaming that one averages higher if they both hit the monster for 9 points of damage?

It seems bizarre to insist that there is no way to tell that fighter A is wielding a warhammer and a shield while fighter B is wielding the larger maul.

I'll admit that there may be some game statistics that are not so easy to quantify, but it's not an across the board thing. And, of course, once the NPC has been hit, he can make a decent judgement.

You can of course argue that a given NPC can't get an accurate reading from a single hit: but that's irrelevant. The responses of NPCs to being hit will average out over time (ie - if each NPC bases his behaviour off of the first time the fighter strikes him, then less NPCs will provoke subsequent attacks from the more powerful fighter on average)

If the DM is making NPC decisions based on PC defenses before the PC is even attacked, of course it is metagaming. Even after it attacks, the monster should often have little extra knowledge. For example, missing on a 3 or hitting on an 18 should effectively tell the monster nothing.

So it's never possible to guess at a foe's defenses from observable parameters?

So, the monster KNOWS that the Fighter rolled a 1 when he did 12 points of damage?

The fighter does... But as I pointed out, it doesn't matter: on average the fighter who hits harder will have foes less likely to provoke.

The monster can gauge how hard the Fighter hits, but it should not be able to do so until it gets hit a few times.

Which doesn't matter: a monster who gets hit hard will be less likely to provoke in future.

Do you, as a player, get hit by a foe for, say, 30% of your hitpoints and then go "oh well, I have insufficient data to decide that I shouldn't provoke an AoO". Or, for that matter, get hit for 3 points and hold off on provoking next round, just in case the monster rolls a d100 for damage?

You don't say "oh well, this monster has only hit me very hard twice, but that's an insufficiently large sample to make any tactical decisions off of". You work with what you know so far.

The first hit at 20 points might be a weak attack, or it might have been a critical. How would the monster know the difference? Of course the DM knows, but if the DM uses that information, he is metagaming.

Criticals don't get announced in your games? At every table I've ever played at, in any system, criticals have always been out-of-the ordinary attack with extra visuals, and everyone involved knows that they've happened.

 

[Saeviomagy]

If the monsters are counting DPR but ignoring the fact that they're pretty obviously going to die or are very likely to lose the fight then the PCs are fighting Rain Man.

Anything beyond "attack the closest target" is too much for a monster that doesn't "run and get help as soon as they spot the party."

No, the PCs are fighting monsters who expect to win, because obviously they've beaten every previous adventuring party who came along. Otherwise they'd be dead already, and the adventurers would have nothing to do.

 

[KarinsDad]

Real numbers? By not using a shield, using dual strike as your at-will, choosing a PP, ED and multiclass that focus on damage, and boosting wisdom and strength (and a bunch of other things), you end up with an average damage per round of at least 150 points. Fighter A does around 30 points of damage in a round, while optimised-for-damage fighter B does 180. If you want breakdowns, just go visit the WoTC optimisation forum.

I'm not seeing it. I went to the optimization forum and did not find a 180 DPR Fighter there.

Maybe you could enlighten us.

 

[KarinsDad]

Criticals don't get announced in your games? At every table I've ever played at, in any system, criticals have always been out-of-the ordinary attack with extra visuals, and everyone involved knows that they've happened.

Irrelevant to the point (and in fact, it's not a rule that monsters know about criticals).

The point was that the monster does not know whether a 20 point attack was a high damage for the hit attack or a low damage for the hit attack.

 

[Goumindong]

The fighter does... But as I pointed out, it doesn't matter: on average the fighter who hits harder will have foes less likely to provoke.

This is just not true. The DPR at the margin never really gets to the point where it makes sense, even with very large discrepancies in AC, no other feats to lower that discrepancy[like distracting shield and Daunting Challenge], no secondary defensive powers on the part of the other characters, and very low damage coming from the character.

The only time i could see it really getting there would be with high defense battleraging fighters.

Consider for a second this metaphor. Imagine you walk into a store with 10 dollars and only 10 dollars, no credit cards, no bank cards, etc. You want to buy a CD. All the CD's on the shelves have different prices.

Some CD's cost 11 dollars, some cost 12, some cost 13, and some cost 25.

Are you going to buy any CD's?

A: No. Does the fact that some CD's are less costly than the ones that cost 25 dollars makes you more likely to buy them? No.

Its the same case, the question of "having too high ac so that enemies never hit you over your friends" almost never comes into consideration in practical terms. In practical terms a marked enemy is going to hit your friends when.

A: He is using a burst power
B: The damage you do is immaterial to him surviving an extra attack next round(but will not kill him)
C: You can't hit him for some reason
D: he is not intelligent
E: Some specific thing has happened that makes the value of the attack significantly higher on another target[E.G. he can take someone out of the fight, he can stun a character sustaining a power, etc]

There is only ONE of these where your defense/damage matters... And its only really your damage. And Combat challenge advantages are not high enough or numerous enough[you would need enough bonuses to make people start running out of feats] to make a big difference in this anyway. The monster is going to do this because he will never see a situation where the DPR at the margin makes sense for him to do it.

E.G.

I am playing, currently, a fighter in plate mail with a heavy shield. He is a dwarf, he has 27 AC at level 8[+2 layered platemail]. He has distracting shield, 15 constitution, and 20 wisdom. He had devoted Challenge and dwarven weapon training. He is wielding a +3 Waraxe and does 1d12+16 per hit on a combat challenge[+20 to attack, expertise was free]. At level 10, he will be taking fast running because he is out of heroic tier feats he needs[and +2 speed when charging is kinda nice to let me get more attacks in].

His AC is literally as high as anyones can get at this point and will be getting higher when he moves into pit fighter and picks up plate specialization. There is no chance that anyone is going to think "oh man, its totally a good idea to attack the wizard instead of the fighter" because I am going to ruin their day if they do it. If someone was doing half as much Damage/attack as i was they still probably wouldn't do it, because they would still get their day ruined.[A 20 str fighter would be doing, with a bastard sword and the same other values as me 1d10+11 on a CC with an attack bonus of 18 on his CC, still a respectable 16.5 avg dmg/hit with a high attack bonus]

Nothing you said here invalidates my interpretation. A power is still being used on the foe.

But the power does not include the caveat about triggering an immediate interrupt attack, nor do non-attack based powers that place marks make an attack to set that mark.

You can, RAI, RAW, by all accounts make CC attacks against those. The enemy does not know that they're going to get CC'd until the attack happens.

After that they can infer it.

 

[IllDM4YOU]

Heelpppp

im new to 4e and i need help with combat
some1 plz post a replie explaining the entire thingy of combat plz