Nullzone
Explorer
If this is how a "real D&Der" thinks then I feel sorry for all the awesome stuff they're missing out on just because they feel like they can't do anything but robotically push a button
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Gencon: Any non-Essentials content coming up?
- Thread starter Terramotus
- Start date
If this is how a "real D&Der" thinks then I feel sorry for all the awesome stuff they're missing out on just because they feel like they can't do anything but robotically push a button
Marshall
First Post
Poorly played Slayers are ineffective, well played Slayers are also ineffective( and beyond boring), optimized slayers are broken all to hell.
Single target, Single attack strikers with no Nova lead to long, boring combats.
Yeah, PHB Rogues and Rangers are in the top level of Strikers and Theives get all the advantages of a Ranger and the features of a Rogue. Combine that with "only miss on a one" accuracy and the Thief slides up into that club before you go for heavy charop.
No, it doesnt. It means the difference between the bottom and average is narrowed. E-fighters play at the bottom and dont move from there.
I've played more than a few games with young kids(8-10yo) and even a few "mentally challenged" folks. None of them required more than the occasional prodding to play their PCs usefully. If someone is having trouble with a standard 4e PC, its got more to do with not paying attention than any form of paralysis.
Really? Ever see a Warpriest in play? They play like a Runepriest without the fiddly bits, except those fiddly bits are what makes a Runepriest useful.
Great. They have at-wills that confer a minor bonus vs. Clerics that have a suite of powers that build on themselves to reinforce the leader role....
That is assuming you play the Warpriest as presented and dont just let them run willy-nilly thru the cleric powerlist. If you do, then yeah, they're a cleric with another name.
Neonchameleon
Legend
(Emphasis mine). If that's your standard of rangers, no wonder you object to Essentials classes. The fundamental ranger advantage is the ability for its damage to scale like a bat out of hell as it takes three attacks per turn, thus trebling the effect of the static damage bonus. (Yes, I do mean three; Twin Strike + Encounter Power). Thieves don't have either twin strike or encounter minor and interrupt powers. They just have good solid damage right the way up. This is something that the thief simply does not get. And at the low levels they are ahead of the ranger in damage the thief's MBA is no stronger than a Sly Flourish from a rogue. (It gets better, granted. But by then the rogue is using encounters such as Sand in the Eyes).
As for all the features of a rogue, thieves largely lack combat control - the main condition they inflict is dead. Blinding Barrage is missing, as is Knockout Blow, dazing strike, and Sand in the Eyes. What they have is Unbalancing Trick (Prone), Tumbling Trick (Cleave), and Thug's Trick (OA).
Nah. They are upper middle assuming non-pregen. But stuck there. The ability to get multiple challenges in a fight - and to use Hammer Hands to negate attacks or Hold the Line/WSG is powerful.
FireLance
Legend
Unless you havbe some objective measurement of "boring", I'm sure you will agree that you are only expressing your opinion.
Slayers trade off* nova capability in the form of daily attack powers for higher at-will damage. It's similar to how avengers trade off a striker damage mechanic for higher accuracy. If you like, think of it as activating a daily attack power that grants a bonus to the damage rolls of at-will attacks until the end of the next extended rest**.
* You are familiar with the concept of "trade off", aren't you? It means giving up one thing for another, and is the foundation of the "class balance" you seem to value so highly.
** I know I've mentioned this before. Fortunately, repeat ignored argument is an at-will power.
"Only miss on a one"? You know, it's hard to take you seriously when you engage in hyperbole like this.
Unless, of course, they are somehow "optimized", right? It's amazing how "optimization" can flip a class from "the bottom" to "broken" with, apparently, no middle ground.
Yes. I actually played one myself.
Warpriests have at-will attack powers, like clerics. Warpriests have encounter attack powers, like clerics. Warpriests have daily attack powers, like clerics. Warpriests have channel divinity powers, like clerics. Warpriests have healing word, like clerics. Warpriests' at-will, encounter and daily powers heal and provide various bonuses, like clerics. To elaborate, a Sun warpriest's powers tend towards protection, healing and restoration, and a Storm warpriest's powers tend towards buffing damage and increasing mobility. If you think that warpriests only have at-will powers, then you really are mistaken.
Warpriest at-will and encounter powers (which PH templar clerics can take, by the way) tend to have effects, which mean that the player will usually get some benefit from using them even if his attack roll misses. The warpriest does not have the templar cleric's Healer's Lore class feature, which makes him less adept at healing, but no worse off than the PH warlord. On the other hand, he does get access to daily utility powers that help counter conditions, remove diseases, and reverse petrification and raise dead at 4th and 8th level. Based on the above information, what is your current assessment of the warpriest: woefully underpowered, or hopelessly broken?
I'm not sure what scale you are going by. Both 'poorly-played' and well-played Slayers are perfectly effective in an average party - having a good attack roll, decent damage, solid defenses and good hitpoints. In the typical encounters for an average party, they will do just fine at contributing to victory. They are only 'ineffective' when compared to the top-tier of the most heavily optimized strikers, which doesn't seem an especially reasonable comparison - and if you are making that comparison, I'm not sure how the 'optimized' Slayers are somehow more broken than many other optimized strikers.
Again, I think you are measuring by a standard way beyond what most people use. Strikers are only acceptable if they attack multiple enemies or make multiple attacks? No way. Those may be the easiest way to optimize, sure, but in terms of an average party, one is perfectly able to contribute with a Slayer or a Barbarian or a Rogue.
All the advantages of a Ranger? You mean, aside from the primary one - the multiple attacks? Thieves make for high accuracy single target damage, just like Rogues. I find the two about on the same level - Thieves have the edge in being able to ensure Combat Advantage and focus on charging/basic attacks, while Rogues get the versatility and power (including multiple targets, multiple attacks, and powerful conditions) of their chosen Encounter Powers.
Thieves and Scouts are at the top tier of strikers, just like Rogues and Rangers are. I'm not seeing any indication that the Essentials classes are more optimizable or more overpowered in any way.
Again, I really don't know what standard you are measuring things by. "The bottom", in my experience, are parties with rogues who use hand crossbows and never have combat advantage, or paladins with high charisma and low strength who choose strength based powers, or star warlocks with stats spread across the entire spectrum... etc.
There are a lot more 'traps' to run into trying to build or play pre-Essentials characters. The default is still decent, compared to past editions, but you can still end up with a subpar character - all of the above are things I've seen firsthand. Its even harder with Essentials. Less options - both in char-gen and play - make it harder to stumble into multiple bad choices. Again, not a style for everyone. For some, though, its just what they want.
Dude, seriously, your experiences do not somehow trump those of others. It's excellent that you have played with folks who have not had these issues. Nonetheless, others have. I have, with intelligent adults, who nonetheless will dither over a sheet of powers for several minutes - or not want to deal with it and just resort to basic attacks. Or, as noted, others for whom prodding is needed - and much easier to do in Essentials, when you don't need to constantly retcon what power they should have used.
You don't get to say, "Oh, it isn't an issue for me, so it can't be an issue for others. If it is, there is clearly something wrong with them." That's just not cool.
Yes, in my current game. He has provided effective healing and does a lot of debuffing enemies via his effect based At-Wills and Encounters. Again, all he has lost out on is Healing Lore, and has picked up a number of useful abilities in its place. What is it that you think makes them so incredibly flawed?
Well, the warpriest as presented lets them choose just freely from the cleric list. In my current game, I think only the Warpriest's daily is from the normal cleric list, though. The rest are domain powers, and have been perfectly fine at preserving the party. His at-wills debuff the enemy, his encounters buff the party, his utilities provide healing or temps, etc.
Going back to your original complaint about the Warpriest, it was that he's "attacking the highest AC critter on the board with an AC attack because you dont have any other options."
Which, if I understand correctly, means you only consider the normal Cleric (and any other leader) to be good because they can target non-AC defenses? And that if they choose any powers that target AC, it means they are a poorly designed character?
(Not to mention that, even if you only attack AC, I don't see anything about the Warpriest forcing them to go after the highest AC critter on the board...)
Again, you are welcome to build awesome and optimized characters for your own games, but I really don't think they should be the standard by which all things should be judged by. Which, as far as I can tell, is what you are doing.
You are perfectly fine to consider Essentials too complex/too simple/too overpowered/too ineffective, or... whatever you feel it is. You are perfectly fine to not like it. But I don't buy the argument about it having these intense flaws, nor do I feel that your evaluations are based on any reasonable standard by which characters should be judged. (Or even if they are, I'm relatively confident 90% of the pre-Essentials classes would be considered just as flawed.)
Above all, I reject your claims that because you don't have an issue with the pre-Essentials classes, it means that the experiences of myself and others are null and void. Dismissing (and even insulting) those whose experiences diverge from your own just isn't cool.
Psikus
Explorer
Not that I agree with Marshall's other points, but that much at least is true. It's fairly common for thieves to tweak their attack bonuses so as to hit on a 2 against an on-level monster: take high dex, accurate weapons, rogue weapon talent, combat advantage, nimble blade, deft blade, and a charge bonus, and we're talking an attack roll of roughly level+10 vs Reflex (with the average monster having Ref=Level+12). And that is without spending Backstab! With the extra +3 from backstab, you won't often miss on a 2, even against higher level monsters. Since Backstab is not needed to achieve this, this is also available for regular rogues, by the way. Also, this level of accuracy doesn't really result in broken amounts of damage (i.e. this is still below ranger levels), though it does put Avengers to shame in their alleged niche of ultra-accurate strikers.
That said, I honestly don't know what he's talking about regarding thieves having 'all the advantages of a Ranger'. That would involve tons of multiattacks, and they get none (except for the odd Low Slash, if you spend the feat to trade away a Backstab).
Tony Vargas
Legend
Any class /with/ an 'easy mode button,' yes. Which is why such classes are flawed. They present you with the choice of interesting options that /might/ be effective, vs a boring one (or few) that /will/ be effective. Not a fun - or balanced - choice.
To be fair, though, this (at least for me) was largely the case for the Rogue as well. High accuracy was always a strong suit. Piercing Strike means they get to target reflex at Heroic, rather than waiting until Paragon, which I think balances out against the Thief's boost in charging/backstab.
Again, I think the point is that you can totally say that some Essentials classes are able to be heavily optimized - you just can't do so while ignoring the same optimization for pre-Essentials classes.
Tony Vargas
Legend
Not quite. Striker damage mechanics are typically at-will (some are 1/round or 1/turn -others aply to every damage roll - some have a not-too-difficult condition to meet), so is the Avenger's greater accuracy. It's easy to balance a trade-off between resources of the same general availability.
The Slayer is balanced with AEDU classes in the way an AD&D fighter was balanced with casters. The Slayer gets exceptional toughness (for a striker) and strong at-will abilities with little choice or variety - AEDU classes get a wider range of powers, including higher-powered dailies. The AD&D fighter got exceptional toughness (d10 hd, higher bonus for exceptional con, high AC, rapidly improving saving throws) and strong unlimitted-use attacks (big weapon plus percentile STR plus specialization plus rapid attack matrix advancement plus multiple attacks at higher levels) - the casters got memorized/used 1/day spells that could be quite difficult to cast in combat with a bewlidering breadth of both function and often overwhelming power. Even the 3.x fighter got a little more choice and variety or at least, customizeability.
Now, while it's obvious, just as common wisdom, that the AD&D and even 3.x fighter never balanced that well vs casters, it's not just because of the similarity to past failures that we can judge the inclusion of the Slayer to introduce balance issues. There's also some very clear logic behind such a judgement. Any attempt to balance the power of abilities that can be used every round against abilities that can be used on a limitted number of times cannot hold when number of rounds vs the number of limitted uses is allowed to vary. If at-will powers used every round for 5 round per encounter over 4 encounters (20 rounds) is balanced with the use of weaker at-wills for 19 rounds and a potent daily on 1, then those same powers can't possibly balanced in a day with only 5 rounds of combat - 5 rounds of at-will use vs 4 rounds of at will + the same daily that supposedly balanced 15 rounds of inferiority, before.
Of course, the DM /can/ keep such classes balanced, just as he could in 3.x (or, to a lesser extent AD&D - there were many more sources of imbalance, and ways to juggle them, back then). It's a matter of finding the length of 'day' at which balance is best, and pegging that as the average you gun for. If that turns out to be too long a day for the DM's liking, he can also reduce the relative value of dailies by making encounters less predictable - if you're never sure how many more encounters you might face, you're hesitant to use dailies - or, if his campaign is tilting the other way, telegraphing the timing/nature of encounters to keep dailies more useful.
Why isn't it a fun or balanced choice?
If a new character (or character deciding simplicity) can pick up the class and know that Option 1 will be easy to use and effective to play - while a more advanced character can assemble their own selection of options to achieve a desired level of complexity and/or optimization... doesn't everyone win?
I was as glad as the next person to be able to avoid Fighters who weren't stuck making full-round attacks all day long. But having a sliding scale of complexity, with both ends balanced against each other, seems a good way to satisfy both camps.
