High Level 4e

[Rechan]

I suppose there are exceptions where one could be really good at several things early on in 3E... but that's usually going to because of stats being rolled instead of a point buy

Or they were playing CoDzilla.

 

[Rechan]

I suspect this thread isn't going to get very on topic because not a lot of folks have played high paragon/epic yet.

 

[amysrevenge]

I suspect this thread isn't going to get very on topic because not a lot of folks have played high paragon/epic yet.

True here, I suppose. I'm about even with Merric - just peeking my head into Paragon.


[sblock]But I reckon an all-14s PC would be almost as terrible at level 1 as at level 22.

And while I'll freely admit that the amount of terrible is smaller in 3.x, I posit that an all-14s PC in 3.x is also reasonably terrible (but without armor class scaling with level you can make a non-caster, or even a caster that doesn't provoke many saving throws, that would be reasonably successful I suppose). Part of my problem with it, I guess, is that I don't find characters who have no strengths or weaknesses to be very interesting, so I have a bias built-in against them.

The real problem here is not that 4E does not reward the generalist. The problem is that building a 4E character with 3.x design guidelines doesn't always work. The way you build a generalist in 4E is very different from the way you build a generalist in 3.x. If it was my game, I'd let someone rebuild their first 4E character once they gain some experience with the system, if it wasn't doing what they wanted it to do.[/sblock]

 

[Jack99]

It seems that 4e, more than any other version of D&D, really rewards specialists over generalists.

Are you sure you played 3e? (And yes, I read the rest of your posts)

Anyway, back to topic.

My players just hit level 17, and for us, the game-speed (while never a problem) seems to have increased during the paragon tier. Our long combats have been epic combats (Aspect of Tiamat goes *splat*), not grindy.

Of course, if you are looking for 10 minutes combats, 4e is probably not your game.

 

[Cyronax]

In 3e, you at least had skill points that you could sink into skills and they weren't making you worse at combat. In 4e, if you sacrifice a feat to pick up skill training (thievery) - as this player did - it is one less feat to sink into TWF, TWD, WE, WF, better armor, etc.

This is a very bad thing in 4e. Most people would just shrug and take the combat optimized powers even if they wanted a skill-monkey.

We had a warlord in one of our campaigns that 'sacrificed' two feats for out of combat/RP situations -- Skill Focus Diplomacy and Linguist. The first was good for a lot of situations, while Linguist was helping out with the fact that none of our PCs knew how to talk to goblins or orcs -- an enemy and an ally -- for us in story. Even the DM's attempt to have a handful of both races speak common didn't help in the eyes of the player, due to in character reasons. It made sense for the story, but then in combat situations the party wasn't operating according to what would be termed the mathematically optimized capability. In the end, it just put a lot of pressure on the other members of the group to work as a team.

C.I.D.

Anyway, my point was that

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I don't know if I would call it a trap to ignore the advice in the ability scores line and class build to put a high stat there. If it's a trap, it is a large pit trap with no trap door or other concealment and a conveniently placed sidewalks to avoid it.

We haven't reached Epic Tier yet. But we're at 19th level. Seems to work fine. Grindy combats we had, every time against enemies that can daze, stun or even dominate - oh, or are Black Dragons. Other combats seem to go pretty fast. Since we also play other campaigns, it often requires a short "adjustment period" to get into the characters abilities and their synergies.

 

[OchreJelly]

our group is in low-paragon level and things are running fine. Sometimes I wonder if it's too easy actually going by a normal encounter buy of XPs. The group isn't super optimized, like they haven't discovered weapon expertise and some have invested feats in "RP feats" like linguist and skill focus etc. Even the ones using the RP feats aren't having trouble hitting things. In general the group is very tactical and focuses heavily on teamwork which tends to shore-up individual shortcomings.

I don't really think the feats swing much (at least at this level of play) but pumping your prime ability has always been true for DND. You wouldn't make a wizard with 14 int in 2E - 4E.

 

[Phaezen]

Played up till 15th level with a large group (up to 8 players a session) witn no real issues timewise, although having good table management helps.

[sblock]
As for the "Jack of All Trades" style character, many people tend to forget the second part of the saying which is "and Master of None".[/sblock]

 

[kitsune9]

Got a question. I play with some folks who don't seem very interested in any kind of adventure that requires a character over 6th or so level. My persaonl feeling is things don't really get interesting until you're at least 10th.

So my question is this: how is 4e for high-level adventuring?

I have been playing since the 70's and have never really had too much trouble with high-level things getting out of hand until 3.5 came along. My 22nd level fighter/sorcerer/arcane archer was doing up to 600 points of damage in a round, which got a little crazy. But my 17th level Magic-User from 2nd edition got in and out of more scrapes (barely) than I can shake a stick at.

I've been in the same boat which is why I run games so I can take campaigns from 1st to 20th level. I haven't gotten in 4e but I heard that grind is about the only "bump" for high-level play.

 

[MrMyth]

I suppose I was saying that while 3e certainly rewarded specialists over generalists, it was possible (or at least much easier) to make an effective generalist in 3e than it is in 4e.

So yes, I stand by both my statements. D&D has always been a game for specialists, and 4e rewards specialists more than any previous edition.

I'm going to disagree here. The gap between the two was massively larger in 3rd edition, in my experience. And while you could build an effective generalist in 3e, you could also build a terrible one. The same is true in 4eE - you can build a good generalist, this player simply didn't do so. Weapon Expertise definitely is an issue, sure, but it sounds like he went down a weaker path at every possible opportunity, and I don't see an easy answer to that - forbid characters from ignoring their primary stats? Prevent them for using lower level weapons?

And honestly, ending up with 6 or 7 points 'to hit' between optimized and non-optimized is fine - I think the problem is that you ran into a monster that the optimized characters needed a disproportionately high number to hit. In general, say I expect an average character to be hitting enemies on an 11 (around half the time), then an optimized character might generally hitting on an 8, and a non-optimized character would be hitting on a 14 or say. Drifting +3/-3 from the norm seems like a reasonable level of difference between such characters without making any one of them either too good or useless. (As in 3rd, when I'd run into a party that had one character hitting on 2+ what required another character a 20 to hit.)

But if you run into something designed to be hard enough that it shifts the curve so that the optimized characters are intended to struggle at hitting... then yeah, the non-optimized character is going to struggle. The problem might be that your DM is running a campaign to challenge not the party, but the optimized characters along. ~shrug~ So it goes.