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

[mlund]

I think veteran players of 3.X are going to need to adjust to the new paradigm a bit. The current configuration of feats rewards characters with more diverse stats - possibly their only reward.

Running with random rolls or optimized-for-first-level point-buys may paint you into a corner when it comes to feats. That's probably part of the reason why they recommend the 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 array.

By the time you get your 3rd feat you have a +1 bump that can bring you to the 13-in-a-stat plateau for a 4th stat, which should open up a lot of doors. Further, with innate retraining options at every level you can swap out your less-desired 2nd Level feat for something that you now qualify for. The only character that could truly be feeling a pinch are humans.

All that said, it does not appear that Clerics are designed to have Strength as a dump stat. In fact, in the Cleric class description it clearly states that Strength should either be your Primary Stat (Battle Cleric) or your Tertiary Stat (Devoted Cleric). So you should be dropping at least a 13 in Strength with a Cleric. Doing otherwise may generate sub-optimal outcomes.

- Marty Lund

 

[Rystil Arden]

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.

Hmm, and you'd have to extensively houserule it to help that javelin character too, since the melee cleric powers are often substantially stronger than the Wis ones at any given level, balanced by the fact that they require you to get into melee.

But you're right, there is definitely much less flexibility. In part, it's because that forces you to be more-or-less one of two or three relatively predictable builds for any given class and thus makes it easier to balance encounters and such. It also means you can easily churn out more base classes for $$ without worrying about overlapping too much. Now WotC can make a Valkyrie class that uses spears and javelins while having divine magic (a leader somewhat hybrid of Warlord and Cleric that has lightning and thunder powers and throws javelins) for you to buy for that Cleric's player, and the Valkyrie has niche protection. Or at least, that's what an apologist will say.

[Random Sidenote]Personally, I mourn the loss of flexibility. Fortunately, I plan on playing both 3.5 and 4e, so I won't have to mourn it too much. 4e and 3.5 have strengths in such opposite areas that it really seems most awesome to just play both, whichever one has strengths you want to focus on today. Well, except for the people who were too unimaginative/unskillful to handle certain aspects of 3.X that I find easy, or those who are similarly unimaginative and see dealbreakers in 4e's various flaws where I see opportunities for houserules.[/Random Sidenote]

 

[Blackbrrd]

No, I didn't forget it. +1 to hit is, at maximum, +5% to hit. It's not +15%. There is no possible math that can make a +1 on a d20 roll into a 15% increased chance to hit. Also note that it really is only useful on Elite or Solo-type creatures or if you score a critical very early in the fight, because damage from a critical with a level-appropriate power from a Striker does a lot of damage to a normal-HP monster. Considering that there's no way to extend the critical range on bows, I consider it a very weak feat.

+1 to hit can make you hit 10-15% more often.
You aren't interested in how many times you have tried to attack (100 in the examples). You are just interested in how many of the attacks actually hit, because that is what is going to affect how much damage you do over time.

Example:
Monster AC 20
Player to-hit 5
Chance to hit 30%
After 100 attacks he has ~ 30 hits

Monster AC 20
Player to-hit 6
Chance to hit 35%
After 100 attacks he has ~ 35 hits


35/30 = 1.17, in other words 17% more hits.

The monster is for instance a hobgoblin soldier vs either:
A paladin with 16 str and a battleaxe
A fighter with 16 str and a battleaxe and talent with one-handed weapons

Let us say you have a monster that needs 35 hits to die.
The paladin would need 117 attacks to get the 35 hits that kill the monster
The fighter would need 100 attacks to get the 35 hits that kill the monster

 

[Cadfan]

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.

I don't think your character is intentionally gimped, or even gimped at all, except in the context of feats. I like playing clerics, and I like playing spell focused clerics. My first 4e character will undoubtedly be either a human rogue, or an elf cleric that focuses on spells rather than melee.

I just think that you might have been better served by not dumping three stats. If you'd been playing with an array, you probably wouldn't have- you'd have ended up with a 10, 11, and a 12 in your dump stats, and once you realized that feats opened up on 13s, you'd have switched the 13 you would have probably put into Con with the 12 you put into something else. A minor change, and suddenly your character has options.

 

[Rystil Arden]

I think veteran players of 3.X are going to need to adjust to the new paradigm a bit. The current configuration of feats rewards characters with more diverse stats - possibly their only reward.

Running with random rolls or optimized-for-first-level point-buys may paint you into a corner when it comes to feats. That's probably part of the reason why they recommend the 16, 14, 13, 12, 11, 10 array.

By the time you get your 3rd feat you have a +1 bump that can bring you to the 13-in-a-stat plateau for a 4th stat, which should open up a lot of doors. Further, with innate retraining options at every level you can swap out your less-desired 2nd Level feat for something that you now qualify for. The only character that could truly be feeling a pinch are humans.

All that said, it does not appear that Clerics are designed to have Strength as a dump stat. In fact, in the Cleric class description it clearly states that Strength should either be your Primary Stat (Battle Cleric) or your Tertiary Stat (Devoted Cleric). So you should be dropping at least a 13 in Strength with a Cleric. Doing otherwise may generate sub-optimal outcomes.

- Marty Lund

Several people have mentioned this Str-tertiary thing, but it's not the case that it would help the character. Actually, the advice from the PH to make Str tertiary is not helpful in this case. I did indeed see it, but it would not have helped. It opens up one good feat option (Light Shield Proficiency) at an incredible cost that is not worth it.

Let's say that I was going to make Strength my tertiary stat, following their advice exactly and having Wis and Cha highest and then Str next. Right now, my tertiary is Con. I need 5 points to get Strength up to 13. So I'll keep My Wis and Cha and lower Con until I have 13 Str.

The net gain from this is that I can take Light Shield Proficiency now if I want (unfortunately, I still can't take any of the other armour feats because they also use Con or Heavy Shield uses 15 Str).

What do I lose? First off, -4 HP (and thus 1 less per surge), -2 surges per day, -2 to Fort saves. That's nearly the same as saying that my character gets Toughness (4/5 of it at least), Durable, and Great Fort (which is a Paragon feat) as three free bonus feats over the Str tertiary character. I also lose -2 to hit with my Star Warlock multiclass. The Str tertiary character still has Str that is far too low to actually use Str Cleric powers enough to choose them, so the gain from that is negligible.

So no, I'd say the advice they give is unwise to follow. As I mentioned above, the character could be reasonably effective without feats. It's annoying not to be able to pick any feats, but it doesn't mean she's weak. In fact, I'd posit that if she grabs three Skill Trainings or something for more versatility, she'll be strictly better than a Cleric who listened to them and took Str and then had to grab Toughness, Durable, and Great Fortitude to make up the lost ground.

I've never argued that my Cleric can't be effective--It's the constrained choices that are quite annoying.

 

[Cadfan]

Incidentally, the stats for my planned Elf Cleric:

Str, 13
Con, 10
Dex, 13 (including racial bonus)
Int, 10
Wis, 18 (including racial bonus)
Cha, 15

I have no intention of using Str for melee except when I absolutely, positive have to do so. I intend the character to be a dedicated spellcaster. But the strength bonus lets me get scale armor and a light shield, which increases my defense while removing my skill penalties.

The feats I intend to get are, in no particular order:

Elven Precision
Channel Divinity (something, don't know what yet)
Astral Fire
Light Shield Proficiency
Skill Training: Perception
Skill Training: Acrobatics.

That fits the traditional cleric style, while still focusing on spells to the exclusion of combat.

 

[helium3]

Hmm, and you'd have to extensively houserule it to help that javelin character too, since the melee cleric powers are often substantially stronger than the Wis ones at any given level, balanced by the fact that they require you to get into melee.

That the "weapon" powers were substantially stronger than the non-weapon powers didn't pop off the page at me, but I wasn't really looking for that. I actually figured making that house ruling would be pretty easy, with the only potential problem being that the game now seems to EXPECT cleric's to be on the front line, only a square behind the defenders.

Allowing the javelin to be used would let my player keep his cleric in the middle of the group where he likes to be, but who knows how that would screw up "game balance" if things are so tightly constrained as to expect the cleric to be in a specific spot in every encounter.

During the first game with the pre-gens I had to explain to him a couple of times that while he's used to playing his character a particular way, 4E expects him to do something different and that he should just go with it if he wants to see what the new edition is supposed to play like.

But you're right, there is definitely much less flexibility. In part, it's because that forces you to be more-or-less one of two or three relatively predictable builds for any given class and thus makes it easier to balance encounters and such. It also means you can easily churn out more base classes for $$ without worrying about overlapping too much. Now WotC can make a Valkyrie class that uses spears and javelins while having divine magic (a leader somewhat hybrid of Warlord and Cleric that has lightning and thunder powers and throws javelins) for you to buy for that Cleric's player, and the Valkyrie has niche protection. Or at least, that's what an apologist will say.

Heh heh. I love that the DMG contains absolutely zero rules verbiage on how to generate your own classes, powers or rituals. As if not including rules is going to prevent it from happening. I mean, I get why the DMG lacks those sections, but it seems sorta silly not to include rules for it. Some DM's are going to do it no matter what you try to force them to do.

Personally, I mourn the loss of flexibility. Fortunately, I plan on playing both 3.5 and 4e, so I won't have to mourn it too much. 4e and 3.5 have strengths in such opposite areas that it really seems most awesome to just play both, whichever one has strengths you want to focus on today. Well, except for the people who were too unimaginative/unskillful to handle certain aspects of 3.X that I find easy, or those who are similarly unimaginative and see dealbreakers in 4e's various flaws where I see opportunities for houserules.

Yeah. I've been predicting for a while now that a lot of groups will switch back and forth between 4E and some other system (3E maybe) when they get bored with it. And I'll tell you one thing, it may just be that I'm not up to speed but running a 4E encounter is VERY rough on the DM. There are a LOT of things going on and a lot to keep track of. I've already told the players that they're responsible for remembering the conditions they place on the creatures and that if they don't remind me, it doesn't happen.

 

[Cadfan]

Let's say that I was going to make Strength my tertiary stat, following their advice exactly and having Wis and Cha highest and then Str next. Right now, my tertiary is Con. I need 5 points to get Strength up to 13. So I'll keep My Wis and Cha and lower Con until I have 13 Str.

What are your characters stats at the moment? The point buy starts you with all 10s and one 8. So if your Str was a 10, it should only cost you 3 points to get it up to a 13.

If I were designing a dwarf wisdom cleric, it would look like this:

Str 13
Con 15 (including racial bonus)
Dex 12
Int 8
Wis 18 (including racial bonus)
Cha 14

You could switch the Con and the Dex scores, depending on whether you prefer to get Astral Fire or Scale Armor Proficiency earlier or later. Both feats are useful regardless of tier, so you could even wait until level 11 and your free +1 to all stats.

 

[helium3]

Incidentally, the stats for my planned Elf Cleric:

Str, 13
Con, 10
Dex, 13 (including racial bonus)
Int, 10
Wis, 18 (including racial bonus)
Cha, 15

I have no intention of using Str for melee except when I absolutely, positive have to do so. I intend the character to be a dedicated spellcaster. But the strength bonus lets me get scale armor and a light shield, which increases my defense while removing my skill penalties.

The feats I intend to get are, in no particular order:

Elven Precision
Channel Divinity (something, don't know what yet)
Astral Fire
Light Shield Proficiency
Skill Training: Perception
Skill Training: Acrobatics.

That fits the traditional cleric style, while still focusing on spells to the exclusion of combat.

I take it you have a copy of the PHB in some form?

I can't even imagine playing a Cleric that focused almost entirely on powers without the weapon descriptor. Sure you could do it, but it just seems so limiting. Especially when the cleric seems specifically designed to engage in melee combat. My hunch is that as with the race/class combo's, playing against type will result in your character being sub-par in some unforseen at this time way.

 

[Rystil Arden]

Incidentally, the stats for my planned Elf Cleric:

Str, 13
Con, 10
Dex, 13 (including racial bonus)
Int, 10
Wis, 18 (including racial bonus)
Cha, 15

I have no intention of using Str for melee except when I absolutely, positive have to do so. I intend the character to be a dedicated spellcaster. But the strength bonus lets me get scale armor and a light shield, which increases my defense while removing my skill penalties.

The feats I intend to get are, in no particular order:

Elven Precision
Channel Divinity (something, don't know what yet)
Astral Fire
Light Shield Proficiency
Skill Training: Perception
Skill Training: Acrobatics.

That fits the traditional cleric style, while still focusing on spells to the exclusion of combat.

You can't take Scale Armour. Not enough Con. That's the annoying thing about it. Str instead of Con only really nets you the one feat and is otherwise a hose.

Honestly, the main differences in stats between your Cleric and mine are that I upped Con instead of Str and got racial bonuses to Con instead of Dex. The high Con works quite well with the Dwarf racials too.

But yeah, you've built basically exactly the same as I would have for a Cleric in that case--Divinity feat (if useful), Racial feat(s) (if useful), whatever increased armour/shield proficiencies you can grab, Energy damage boost if you can get it, then from the Improved Init/Toughness/SkillBoost list. You've just assigned in nearly the exactly favourable way to take as many of those as possible (The only change--if you lower Cha to 13 and boost Con to 13 (and put another point elsewhere), you can even take Scale Armour too). It's a bit cookie-cutter.

Oh, and I suggest looking at Raven Queen's Blessing. It may not be the absolute best of the Channel Divinities, depending on group make-up, but it seems the most likely to be consistently of great use--healing for 1/4 of their HP + 4 is not shabby at all for your Elf Cleric to add on a free action when you drop something 1/encounter.