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As was pointed out in Converting your Character, a samurai is rather close to a great weapon fighter. However, there are a few distinctive quirks, probably buildable as encounter powers, that are genre staples for the samurai. A big one here is the psychic duel -- rather than going after one...

Doing the same calculations as I did earlier (nW+B, 50% hit chance with +2 proficiency, 20 attacks) Falchion, T1: 58n + 11B + 5 Falchion, T2: 58n + 11B + 10 Falchion, T3, improved critical: 61n + 11B + 30 At T1, if 7n < 5 the Falchion is better. This is never true. At T2, if 7n < 10 the Falchion...

Yes. Furthermore, it doesn't qualify for the one-handed weapon Fighter bonus. The fighter bonus is a function of how the weapon is wielded, not the type of the weapon. Because they wrote it that way? It's not really a big deal; until you get scimitar dance you're better off with other weapons...

As a GM, I would encourage players to play a mix of classes and roles; having everyone do the same thing can get bland. However, I'm not going to compel the players. On the other hand, I'm not going to let the player mix compel me either; if I want to use swarms of minions in an encounter, I'm...

Perhaps you haven't been reading the analyses? I assure you, I'm not doing damage per hit (I'm actually doing damage per 20 attacks).

Well, maybe. It's not your job as GM to show the players how they're playing wrong, though showing them that playing something other than a striker can be fun is a good thing.

+4 is low. A level 1 character probably has +4 (18 stat); a level 10 character probably has +8 (20 stat, +2 weapon, +1 feat), a level 11 +9 (21 stat, +2 weapon, +2 feat), a level 20 +12 (23 stat, +4 weapon, +2 feat), a level 21 +14 (24 stat, +4 weapon, +3 feat), a level 30 +17 (26 stat, +6...

That's a problem for the all-striker party no matter what it's facing. However, single-target debuffs are very nice vs solos, and there are a lot of those available to strikers.

Doing the same math for 1H weapons: Without Improved Critical or other special feats: Battleaxe/Flail/Warhammer: 59.5n + 10B Scimitar/War Pick: 48.5n + 10B + 4.5t Longsword: 53n + 11B Bastard Sword: 65n + 11B Battleaxe > Scimitar if 11n > 4.5t, which is always true Longsword > Battleaxe if B >...

An all-striker party does well against solos, and poorly against minions. The combination of a lack of healing and a lack of suppression makes a striker party very brittle, though -- it does a lot of damage, but if all the monsters decide to target one character, there's not much the PCs can do...

So, to actually clarify the odds: Assume a character is doing nW + B, and attacks 20 times, rolling the values 1 through 20. Also, assume hit chance for a +2 proficiency weapon is 50%, and that damage is average (i.e. 5.5 for a d10, 6.5 for a d12, 7 for 2d6). Without Improved Critical...

If you have a situation where all the monsters are beating on one character, even if the character is a defender, the party is using poor tactics. It's much better if you can get the monsters to split their attacks between two or three characters -- preferably, the second character is also one...

In practice, the way money works in 4e means that adjusting the sale price of magic items doesn't matter all that much. Assuming the DM gives the parties useful items as treasure (which the DMG says he should), the only items a party is likely to sell is lower level stuff they're replacing...

Another issue that is being missed here is overkill. The extra damage from high crit is only useful if the crit didn't already kill the monster. The extra damage from hitting when you would have missed is nearly always important, because it's very unlikely that your miss would have killed the...

At tier 1, high crit is never better than +1 to hit -- over 20 attacks, high crit gives an average of +6.5 damage, +1 to hit gives +1 hit, which is +6.5 damage if your damage is 1W (with no bonuses of any type, including enhancement). At tier 2, high crit gives an average of +13 damage over 20...

To be fair to WoTC, I've yet to see a game system with a robust, complete, and interesting resolution mechanic for non-combat skills. The vast majority of them boil down to "roll your skill, and the GM decides if your roll was good enough". If multiple people try, usually all that matters is the...

Would the effects on PC power be too extreme if the bastard sword and rapier were eliminated from the game? Currently, they're so superior that they make any other weapon choice foolish, which is annoying; I'd rather not see players forced towards one path (yeah, it limits you to light/heavy...

I would scale costs based on magic item values (probably just 'same as a magic item of the same level', not xp values, because the amount of money PCs have on hand follows the magic item values, not the xp values. This does mean it's generally more cost-effective to create a horde of weenie...

The problem is not with the greatsword; it's reasonably well balanced in comparison to other military two-handed weapons. The real problem is the bastard sword, because it's better than any other weapon by an unreasonable margin. Change the bastard sword from a 1d10 weapon to a 2d4 weapon and a...

The actual advantage is usually higher than that, because strength also adds to damage, though the magnitude of the difference varies with level (it's +1 damage forever. If you're normally doing 10 damage per hit, that's +10%. If you're normally doing 25 damage, that's +4%). With very few...