D&D 4E The Best Thing from 4E

[Tony Vargas]

Originally Posted by spinozajack View Post
It's never the case, in any 4e combat, where you do not use your encounter powers at the top of the round.

Read more: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?429542-The-Best-Thing-from-4E/page69#ixzz3cngWqZud

This is not my experience.

If your encounter powers are immediate/free actions, you wait for them to be triggered.

If your encounter powers are AoEs, you might have to reshape the battlefield first.

If your encounter powers grant healing, you might wait until you or allies have lost hit points.

Dailies are much the same. Particularly at lower levels, when dailies were a bit more scarce, my players would not all use a daily per encounter. They ration them for when they need them.

The idea of burning encounter attack powers ASAP is a valid formula, and works fine for white room DPR calculations, for instance.
It sacrifices tactical interest and depth, though, pushing 4e down towards the level of playing a 5e fighter or similar DPR-focused character. Which, of course, is fine if that's what you're going for. One of the things about a system like 3.x or 4e which is choice-rich at chargen & level-up, is that you can choose to emulate a choice-poor concept, if you like.

 

[pemerton]

The idea of burning encounter attack powers ASAP is a valid formula, and works fine for white room DPR calculations, for instance.
It sacrifices tactical interest and depth, though.

I also think it sacrifices effectiveness. This came up on the other thread that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] linked to above.

For instance, a big part of 4e combat and tactics is surge-management. This means not just damage output but controlling incoming damage, which includes imposing conditions and controlling positioning. Another big part of 4e combat and tactics is optimising AoE effects. This includes controlling positioning.

Obviously damage is important, and an excess of healing and control can lead to combats that are drawn out in play. But damage isn't the be-all and end-all, in my experience.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I also think it sacrifices effectiveness. This came up on the other thread that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] linked to above.

For instance, a big part of 4e combat and tactics is surge-management. This means not just damage output but controlling incoming damage, which includes imposing conditions and controlling positioning. Another big part of 4e combat and tactics is optimising AoE effects. This includes controlling positioning.

Obviously damage is important, and an excess of healing and control can lead to combats that are drawn out in play. But damage isn't the be-all and end-all, in my experience.

Right, Stinking Cloud, plus a bard or warlord that can push and slide the enemy around the board is going to be a LOT more effective at generating damage than tweaking some direct damage spell and unleashing it on round 1 of every fight. I mean even if its nothing but just using T-Wave, it is OFTEN quite nasty.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I also think it sacrifices effectiveness. This came up on the other thread that [MENTION=6696971]Manbearcat[/MENTION] linked to above.

For instance, a big part of 4e combat and tactics is surge-management.

I find that surge-management is more often related to dailies than use of encounters. For instance, the party that hoards dailies, can end up very low on surges after a number of encounters that judicious use of dailies could have shortened, and thus be forced to blow dailies less effectively to get through later encounters at all.

But, yes, optimizing DPR is just that, there are other factors, and making good use of them can give you a better overall result. Optimized DPR is closer to a sure thing, it almost always delivers, and you don't have to think about tactics as much in each encounter (if you like tactical depth and want to be optimal over a whole campaign, or even a whole 'day,' that's a bad thing - if you want to be able to ignore tactics while still contributing consistently, though, it's fine). The trap I've seen it fall into is that it'll bloody a major enemy fairly quickly, but leave you plinking it for a number of rounds to finish it off, and there are a lot of nastier monsters that become deadlier when bloodied, so you end up extending that danger instead of minimizing. Of course, by the same token, there are some monsters that become less dangerous once bloodied.

 

[Manbearcat]

Getting back to Math, Monsters, and Minions. Throughout the life period of 4e, the designers got better and better at understanding just how incredibly awesome, malleable and capable their ruleset was. However, I wish they would have gone further.

Minion rules have so, so many applications (as I posted upthread). One of the best uses of the Minion rules is to use them for monsters with a bunch of appendages. This makes combat with monsters like the Hydra, Tentacle Monsters (like the Kraken, etc), and the Beholder so much more tactically deep for both the PCs and the GM (do I go after the central mass or this appendage or that appendage, etc). Also, with "each creature" having their own autonomy, it mitigates the potential of status effect lockdown and/or having to use no action effects/spend action economy to shrug off debilitating status effects.

I really like the iteration of the 4e Beholder. However, the last Beholder boss fight I did in 4e had:

1) Mass with central eye as an Elite.

2) Each Eye Stalk was a Minion, obviously with 1 HP, its own defenses, and its own discrete actions.

I've done that with tons of monsters with that general theme. No other D&D ruleset even attempts this and if you tried to pull it off with any of the other rulesets, it wouldn't work well or be as tactically rich.

 

[spinozajack]

I've played tactical characters, warlords, strikers, defenders, but why mark an enemy and kill it in two rounds when you can just kill it in one and not need to mark it? Then you deprive it of retaliation. The main way to "win" D&D, not just 4e, is to take high value targets off the board as quickly as possible. Sure, a controller can help out with minions or what have you, but so can a ranger.

My comment about the best status condition being dead is not specific to 4th edition anyway, it's surprising people took offense to that. It's just that in 4e, with combats that often drone on into a grind, it's better to have more striking than less, and more optimal characters than less. Tactics are important, but the main one that applies in every game of D&D is teaming up against one enemy to take monsters off the board. Single target damage is where it's at. Spreading out damage is simply guaranteeing enemies live longer and thus get more rounds in which they can retaliate.

In the general case in 4th edition though, encounter powers should almost always be used very early in each encounter, or they should be retrained. The reason why is the same. The sooner you unload on enemies, the less of them there are, the less actions they can take against you. Meaning dead is the best status condition. That's the secret to "winning" D&D combat, if you knew what you were doing in 4e or other editions, while not playing a game of cat and mouse with your enemies, is to kill stuff faster instead of drag things out and let that enemy have another chance at a lucky crit.

It is from this perspective that I still say, I'd much rather two strikers at the front line than one striker and one defender. Two strikers means one bloodies a standard, the other kills it, in round one. Two rangers, for example, could take out 1-6 minions in the first round of combat. Or 1-2 standard monsters. A defender is going to take less damage, but deal a lot less. A striker's defenses aren't just his AC and HP, it's all the hits he didn't end up taking because he killed an enemy 1,2,3 rounds sooner than the defender could have. The difference in HP and AC between a well built striker and defender in no way accounts for the difference between how quickly the striker will take enemies off the board. Once you realize that, you realize that strikers are actually much better self and party defenders.

Understanding this is why the 5th edition fighter works so well, they made him a striker. One of the biggest wtf moments when I first opened up the 4e PHB was going to the fighter page and seeing it have a role of "defender". I was like, no thanks. I play a fighter, I don't want to be given a role of "defending others", I want to go out and kill stuff and be able to take hits while doing that. A ranger actually fills that role in 4e. And by killing stuff faster, is more effective at reducing incoming damage to himself and the party as well. Being 1-2 points of AC behind and 1 HP do not account for taking half the rounds to kill foes, especially tough ones. I would always run up to the biggest, baddest enemy I could find, and do up to 6 attacks against it. (2 twin strikes with an action point, and one or two off hand strikes). Dead. Always. Then my allies mop up. By sufficiently weakening enemies in 1 round of combat, an ally could even finish them off. Which, again, comes down to damage, not status effects. If you are picking a power, and power one does more damage, it's probably the best thing to take. If you want to win, why aren't you picking the best powers? Are you playing combat as a sport and want to toy with your enemies, sliding them around? Why? Unless you're CE that seems cruel. Just kill them and be done with it and move on to the next one.

As a striker, I would often estimate which enemies were peachy so I could swoop in and finish them off. Of course you can't move in between twin strikes, but you could use an off hand strike against a second target if you killed one off.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

I've played tactical characters, warlords, strikers, defenders, but why mark an enemy and kill it in two rounds when you can just kill it in one and not need to mark it? Then you deprive it of retaliation. The main way to "win" D&D, not just 4e, is to take high value targets off the board as quickly as possible. Sure, a controller can help out with minions or what have you, but so can a ranger.

My comment about the best status condition being dead is not specific to 4th edition anyway, it's surprising people took offense to that. It's just that in 4e, with combats that often drone on into a grind, it's better to have more striking than less, and more optimal characters than less. Tactics are important, but the main one that applies in every game of D&D is teaming up against one enemy to take monsters off the board. Single target damage is where it's at. Spreading out damage is simply guaranteeing enemies live longer and thus get more rounds in which they can retaliate.

In the general case in 4th edition though, encounter powers should almost always be used very early in each encounter, or they should be retrained. The reason why is the same. The sooner you unload on enemies, the less of them there are, the less actions they can take against you. Meaning dead is the best status condition. That's the secret to "winning" D&D combat, if you knew what you were doing in 4e or other editions, while not playing a game of cat and mouse with your enemies, is to kill stuff faster instead of drag things out and let that enemy have another chance at a lucky crit.

It is from this perspective that I still say, I'd much rather two strikers at the front line than one striker and one defender. Two strikers means one bloodies a standard, the other kills it, in round one. Two rangers, for example, could take out 1-6 minions in the first round of combat. Or 1-2 standard monsters. A defender is going to take less damage, but deal a lot less. A striker's defenses aren't just his AC and HP, it's all the hits he didn't end up taking because he killed an enemy 1,2,3 rounds sooner than the defender could have. The difference in HP and AC between a well built striker and defender in no way accounts for the difference between how quickly the striker will take enemies off the board. Once you realize that, you realize that strikers are actually much better self and party defenders.

Understanding this is why the 5th edition fighter works so well, they made him a striker. One of the biggest wtf moments when I first opened up the 4e PHB was going to the fighter page and seeing it have a role of "defender". I was like, no thanks. I play a fighter, I don't want to be given a role of "defending others", I want to go out and kill stuff and be able to take hits while doing that. A ranger actually fills that role in 4e. And by killing stuff faster, is more effective at reducing incoming damage to himself and the party as well. Being 1-2 points of AC behind and 1 HP do not account for taking half the rounds to kill foes, especially tough ones. I would always run up to the biggest, baddest enemy I could find, and do up to 6 attacks against it. (2 twin strikes with an action point, and one or two off hand strikes). Dead. Always. Then my allies mop up. By sufficiently weakening enemies in 1 round of combat, an ally could even finish them off. Which, again, comes down to damage, not status effects. If you are picking a power, and power one does more damage, it's probably the best thing to take. If you want to win, why aren't you picking the best powers? Are you playing combat as a sport and want to toy with your enemies, sliding them around? Why? Unless you're CE that seems cruel. Just kill them and be done with it and move on to the next one.

As a striker, I would often estimate which enemies were peachy so I could swoop in and finish them off. Of course you can't move in between twin strikes, but you could use an off hand strike against a second target if you killed one off.

This is all fantastic but you're missing several points:

1) Your tactics are great for 'steal cage death match' type adventures where you just endlessly encounter successions of enemies and wipe them out and go on to the next batch with no variation.

2) What happens when your ranger runs into a bunch of exploding minions, a leader that can stand back, and/or a controller that can negate your mobility, etc?

3) How do you deal with scenarios that don't require you to murderize everything? Especially ones where doing so is simply impossibly hard and you need other tactics?

4) You paint fighters as if they are weak on damage output. Did you ever really play a GW fighter? One with the feat that adds +WIS to CS attacks perhaps (there are other ways too, but this was the one that worked right OOTB in 2008 with PHB1).

5) There's a lot more difference in toughness between a fighter and a ranger than you seem to imagine. This gets especially critical when the situation isn't one where dealing out vast damage will automatically mitigate said damage. This could be because its an SC, or it could be because of auras, terrain, etc in a combat, or it could just be that the idea is just to hold off the enemy for 3 rounds while you accomplish X.

6) What about terrain? What if there's a chokepoint and the fighter can stuff it up, but good luck having the ranger survive doing that. How about if there's a cliff and pushing the enemy off it is a LOT better than MOAR DAMAGE! What if there are 12 rather weak enemies and you can't kill them in one blow, but you also can't pull out an AoE or a zone or even be sticky enough to stop 3 of them yourself for a round?

There's a HELL of a lot of situations where a party full of nothing but rangers isn't going to cut it. We all ONE HUNDRED PERCENT AGREE with you that if all you do is endlessly fight basic encounter templates in sphereworld where no other considerations apply that sure enough you can create one sort of character build that is so super optimized to that one situation that it will outperform all others, and its pretty likely to be either a chargebarian, a battlefield archer, or some variant of warlock or rogue that probably uses some sort of charge optimization too, or a radiant mafia or a frost cheeze mob. ho-hum.

You won't survive level 1 with that fixation in MY campaign. Really, your party WILL need other tools.

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've played tactical characters, warlords, strikers, defenders, but why mark an enemy and kill it in two rounds when you can just kill it in one and not need to mark it?

A whole-party Alpha Strike might be able to drop one enemy in one round, sure. The rest of enemies can then use the same tactic and drop at least one PC.

Marking (in 4e), along with Controller tricks, could keep monsters from efficiently using the all-to-obvious-and-effective 'focus fire' tactic, and additional tactics could develop from there. Thus all the 'tactical depth' you always hear about. You can't just develop an optimal build/strategy away from the table and expect it to give you the best result every time.

My comment about the best status condition being dead is not specific to 4th edition anyway, it's surprising people took offense to that.

Well, this is a "things you like about 4e" thread. Context, y'know.

It's just that in 4e, with combats that often drone on into a grind, it's better to have more striking than less, and more optimal characters than less.

Actually, the kind of burn-your-encounter-attacks-up-front tactics you're talking about are exactly the kind that will give you a grindy-at-the-end combat. Especially against more challenging encounters.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

And this really does bring it back to the fact that 4e is VERY hard to pin down as "this is what you have to do." I don't think D&D ever is, but in previous editions there were definitely classes, weapons, spells, and items that were "just better". I mean arguably a 1e wizard is just a better combatant than a fighter. There are cases where it isn't true though, which is why you generally haul along a fighter, and a rogue, instead of just all clerics and wizards. Normally, at low-mid levels anyway, its safer.

I think even in a fairly tactical sense this is also true with 4e. The all-ranger party will toast a lot of encounters, but 10% of the time things will go wrong for them, BADLY wrong, TPK wrong. They're too all-or-nothing. If you OTOH drop in a warlord or a cleric, and a wizard, it may be that 30% of the time the party does measurably worse in a fight, but they're only 1% likely to tank. You can survive 1% of your encounters going bad, that's only a handful in 30 levels, 10% is like one every level, pretty soon that all-ranger party is just done. At best they'll be high-attrition.

The point is, in 4e its safer to have a mixed party, and MUCH better when you start considering all the crazy things that can happen to a party outside of just needing to slag monsters fast.

 

[spinozajack]

Necronomicon writer, that's why you play ranger / warlord hybrids. You get most of the healing goodness and immediate action or interrupt abilities from both classes, allowing you to totally dominate. In my experience even with such a character, it was rare that I even needed to use healing abilities in combat to survive. Those minor actions were usually reserved for attacks or quarrying the next victim.

Alpha striking is a good tactic, and if monsters aren't playing for keeps and trying to win, they aren't being played realistically. If players aren't dying, it's because you're playing the monsters too easy. Why should monsters play nice or play fair? They're monsters ffs, let them kill the PC once in a while. Alpha striking is what both sides should be doing to win. If the DM isn't playing the monsters to win, he's rigging the game for the PCs. That sucks. Why bother playing a game you know you're going to win? I never understood that mentality.