D&D 4E 4e, Non-Martial Characters, and Limited Feat Choices

[Cadfan]

I'm not sure you understand. I'm in the middle of a game here. These are not options.

Ah... Talk to your DM? I generally DM, and if a player realizes he built his character in such a way that the character cannot achieve its goals, I allow him to change it. I'd be especially willing to do when everyone is playing under a new set of rules.

Not really. The prereqs for the +Energy feats are extremely haphazarad. Note that Dark Fury requires Wisdom and Con, so the whole "Dex to accurately shoot people" isn't where it's at.

Look at Dark Fury from the perspective of a Wizard or a Warlock, and it makes more sense. Those are wizard feats, and have prereqs from wizard secondary skills.

Also, I feel like a Light Shield shouldn't require such high strength. What the heck is the point of a "Light" Shield if someone with average (no bonus or penalty) strength can't even use it?

"Light Shield" = "Not as heavy as a Heavy Shield, which would require Str 15."

The Int prereqs are quite logical, though there's really only one Int feat that's useful (and then, it's just another flavour of Skill feat, though I like the flavour of Jack of All Trades and may come back for it via retraining when I reach a higher tier and get some Int boostage).

This is true. But in the meantime, if you won't take dex, you'll still be getting benefits from a 13 int. You'll improve your reflex defense, and benefit many of your class skills. As I understand right now, you have nothing benefiting your reflex defense at all. Might be worth 3 points of a 22 point buy.

See, now that's really terrible--that's the worst thing I've heard so far in any of the 4e threads. You're saying that I should pick my god based on the mechanics of the Channel Divinity feat and not on what god fits for my character concept. It's an attitude I was told I would not have to adopt in 4e, and if the designers weren't being honest on this, then I'm going to feel quite betrayed.

Actually, I was saying that I'd use the mechanics for any given feat if I liked them, and describe it as I please. I don't play in a game with the default gods, so feats linked to specific divinities are available to whoever wants them.

For you though, feel betrayed if you like. I don't think that Sehanine's feat is terrible. You, on the other hand, do. The game wasn't designed for you personally, so occasionally that happens.

 

[KevinF]

Feats that should be of use to you:

Alertness
Improved Initiative
Jack of All Trades
Linguist
Mounted Combat
Skill Focus for...
(Inititive, Religion, perception, history, diplomacy, Arcana,Heal)
Skill Training for...
(Many)
Toughness
Weapon Focus
Fast Runner
Dodge Giants

Since you only get 6 feats in the heroic tier, I don't see any problems.

And remember, you realy limited this character's options based on your design. You made them very "bookish" so feats like linquist and skill trainings make a lot of sense.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Look at Dark Fury from the perspective of a Wizard or a Warlock, and it makes more sense. Those are wizard feats, and have prereqs from wizard secondary skills.

Clerics of Evil deities do Necrotic damage, so it actually works for some Clerics. Also, Orb Wizards (and I think most Wizard will want to have Orb at least as a second implement) will definitely have the Wisdom and almost-certainly also have the Con. Dex, on the other hand, is typically the Cleric's dump-stat. There's really very little reason for a Cleric to take Dex except to get Astral Fire (if you must have the Ref boost, better to get it from Int, which raises Arcana for rituals).

This is true. But in the meantime, if you won't take dex, you'll still be getting benefits from a 13 int. You'll improve your reflex defense, and benefit many of your class skills. As I understand right now, you have nothing benefiting your reflex defense at all. Might be worth 3 points of a 22 point buy.

This provides one additional feat pick, and one that's not terribly different from skill feats I can already pick. It's not worth it to bother my GM to try to get a retcon.

Actually, I was saying that I'd use the mechanics for any given feat if I liked them, and describe it as I please. I don't play in a game with the default gods, so feats linked to specific divinities are available to whoever wants them.

Ahhh, okay. That's perfectly reasonable then. You can see how without that knowledge, your point would read to us as "Pick the mechanics you want, not the god that works for RP". There's no betrayal in making Sehanine's Reversal suck (and it does suck)--the betrayal is if you are forced to make what should be RP choices (deity selection, etc) on mechanical grounds, which you seemed to be suggesting (but were not due to the difference in your homebrew).

 

[Rystil Arden]

Feats that should be of use to you:

Alertness
Improved Initiative
Jack of All Trades
Linguist
Mounted Combat
Skill Focus for...
(Inititive, Religion, perception, history, diplomacy, Arcana,Heal)
Skill Training for...
(Many)
Toughness
Weapon Focus
Fast Runner
Dodge Giants

Since you only get 6 feats in the heroic tier, I don't see any problems.

And remember, you realy limited this character's options based on your design. You made them very "bookish" so feats like linquist and skill trainings make a lot of sense.

I'd suggest you read some of the earlier posts. Two of the feats on your list require stats she doesn't have (the Int ones). One of them cannot possibly be useful (Weapon Focus). One cannot be useful except for an extremely contrived scenario that is unlikely to happen (Fast Runner--remember that she doesn't have any reason to ever charge). And three are candidates for retraining later, maybe, in a different adventure. That really only leaves the 4 mentioned in the OP.

 

[Cadfan]

Lets make this a challenge.

Can someone design a character that gets LESS use out of the available heroic tier feats than does this one? Requirement: The character may not be intentionally gimped.

 

[helium3]

I put together a party of five 10th level pre-gens for my group so that I could run them through a couple of 4E encounters before they decided whether or not to switch. The composition was as follows:

Human Warlock
Elf Paladin
Hafling Rogue
Human Cleric
Hobgoblin Fighter

I noticed the feat issue right away, though in a slightly different way.

Basically, I had to work pretty hard to make sure that they didn't all have very similar feat selections and in most cases each character had a similar feat to at least one other character. This wasn't a huge deal, but I was sort of surprised at how much more difficult it was to pick out feats than I was expecting. Both humans took exactly the same set of racial feats and had some other feats in common as well. I'm sort of wondering if in 4E characters of the same race will generally have very similar feat selections.

I also noticed how important it was not to dump all your ability score improvements into just your primary and secondary ability score. I put all the pre-gens together by picking the race and class, figuring out what the general "build" was and then assigning the ability scores appropriately. Then, when I got to feats I realized that most of them didn't qualify for a lot of the cool class related feats. I didn't care enough to go back and fix this, though.

The other thing I noticed (and not related to feats) was that you're essentially penalized for the entire "career" of your character for going "against type." The two characters that went against type (the elf paladin and the hobgoblin fighter) had lower ability scores in their primary stats than the other characters that were not against type. As near as I can tell, an elven paladin will ALWAYS have a lower primary score than a dragonborn paladin simply because the dragonborn paladin gets a stat bump in the same stat that is the class's primary score.

Mind you, I don't think this is a problem, I was just sort of surprised to see this for some reason. Given how many comments they made about doing away with the score penalties for picking a certain race, I was sorta surprised to see that the penalty still basically existed, only now you only get hit with it if you pick a race/class combo that isn't designed to be synergistic. It made me wonder why they didn't do away with racial ability score mods entirely for character races and differentiate them entirely with racial powers and the like.

 

[helium3]

Oh, and it has occurred to me at various points that the PHB may have been designed to be somewhat thin. The idea being that this will effectively force groups to adopt and use the splatbooks and future core PHB's. It's either that or you get bored doing the same thing over and over again.

Given the limited range of options and the ease of re-training, just how many times do you really think you're going to be able to play a "core-only" wizard before you start to get the feeling that you've pretty much used all of the available powers?

 

[Rystil Arden]

Lets make this a challenge.

Can someone design a character that gets LESS use out of the available heroic tier feats than does this one? Requirement: The character may not be intentionally gimped.

That's an interesting idea--Question before people have at it: Do you think that Jyrantha was intentionally gimped? Because I find her quite effective (so not gimped), and if she is somehow gimped, it certainly wasn't intentional. Honestly, the only thing about her that's annoying is that 4e has so few feat choices. As far as her build, I'm really loving the way she interacts with powers, items, and skills. I could play her without feats if I absolutely had to and I think she could still do her job with this build, it's just quite annoying that this is essentially what I may have to do.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Oh, and it has occurred to me at various points that the PHB may have been designed to be somewhat thin. The idea being that this will effectively force groups to adopt and use the splatbooks and future core PHB's. It's either that or you get bored doing the same thing over and over again.

Given the limited range of options and the ease of re-training, just how many times do you really think you're going to be able to play a "core-only" wizard before you start to get the feeling that you've pretty much used all of the available powers?

I agree--I mentioned this earlier in the thread. As for your experiences with repeated feats over the characters, I totally agree. It's what I said before--some other characters might have one or two more viable options open to them than Jyrantha did, but after that, they're going to be dipping into the same pool of four or five default feats if they aren't Martial sorts.

 

[helium3]

I agree--I mentioned this earlier in the thread. As for your experiences with repeated feats over the characters, I totally agree. It's what I said before--some other characters might have one or two more viable options open to them than Jyrantha did, but after that, they're going to be dipping into the same pool of four or five default feats if they aren't Martial sorts.

Well, but aren't the warlock and the wizard the only two classes that are by default not expected to ever use their actual weapons?

I felt bad for the player of my cleric though. He had a cool character in 3E that chucked javelins when making an attack was his best option. He can't do that in 4E without me making a house rule, as NONE of the cleric powers work with ranged attacks (even those like javelins that use strength as the ability score).

It's pretty clear that the designers thought that "too many options" was a really bad thing and worked pretty hard to force classes into a much narrower view of what that class is and should do. Not that we couldn't see THAT coming back in August.