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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tervin" data-source="post: 4268411" data-attributes="member: 66491">MAD is not nearly as serious a condition in 4E as it was in 3.x. You raise stats a bit more often than you did in the old rules, and every time you do it, you either raise 2 or all 6 of them. An example:A hypothetical character has four important stats. A is most important, B and C are about equal as second in importance and D is good to keep as high as possible. Of the last two F has next to no importance at all, and E is only relevant for a couple of skills or so. (Having made a 16th level build for each class as a way to get to know the system, I feel that this is a quite common description.)Depending on how much you depend on the A stat you would choose different stats from the beginning, but lets say that you go with a 16, 14, 14, 13, 10, 8 array - which really looks MAD, doesn't it? After adding racial bonuses you instead have 18, 14, 14, 15, 10, 8 - not going for the perfect race/class fit with stats, you went for something close enough. After level 4 you have: 19, 15, 14, 15, 10, 8 and level 8 might give 20, 15, 15, 15, 10, 8. (Yes, all those odd numbers are ugly right now, but the payoff will come.) And with level 11: 20, 16, 16, 16, 11, 9. Very nice numbers if I say so myself, and could be 20, 18, 16, 14, 11, 9 with another race.If you had instead chosen 18, 13, 13, 10, 10, 8 you would go from 20, 13, 13, 12, 10, 8 to 21, 14, 13, 12, 10, 8 to 22, 14, 14, 12, 10, 8 and 23, 15, 15, 13, 11, 9. Not as generally strong, but still has both a top stat and some decent ones beside it.Yes, this is all 10 levels later. But isn't it later in the career that the MAD problems are supposed to really kick in?As for a lack of feats, I agree to an extent. If you make a very focused build you will probably end up having only a few relevant feats. Still, building the level 16 characters I found 15-20 feats that I wanted in every case before I cut it down to only 10. The exercise did teach me to keep track of where I wanted my character to go from the beginning - otherwise cool paragon feats would be missed out on.For that reason, when it becomes time for me to make a real 4th edition character for playing in a campaign I think I will actually make preliminary builds for it at a few high levels. I have played a character in 3.x from levels 1 to 21 where I placed the stats wrong from the beginning, and it made it weaker than it should be all through its career. (All the rest of the party have also done similar weird builds, which makes the group effectively a couple of levels weaker than it should be. That is a fun challenge for us, and a matter for another thread.) Picking the wrong stats is even more of a risk in the new game, where retraining can fix almost every other early mistake you make. (And now I have really reambled away from the topic too many times. Better stop.)</blockquote>

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