[4e][Paragon] Kombat Kraziness (closed)

[Graf]

You see... that's the kind of argument that I think you can just take too far.

Like when people kept arguing in KK1 that Come-and-get-it was a shift because of a funny word choice and thus did all this stuff that it obviously, by design, wouldn't do (i.e. give everyone else in the group a free attack).

I'm fine with it being a save of course, it's your ruling.
I just think that, in some cases, you can dig yourself into some fantastically weird spots by trying to literally interpret tiny bits of text.

 

[Victim]

Yeah, that's why Come and Get It was changed.

Like I said in the rules thread, the DMG rules for forced movement allow saves in much broader conditions than pits and lava. Right now, I have to say that I'm leaning towards allowing saves for most walls and zones.

Do you really think it was intended and balanced that you could push or slide into and out of the wall of fire repeatly to inflict multiples of its damage?

By victimen at 2008-09-17

Even with the ~50/50 shot for forced movement, I don't think powers like blade barrier and Wall of Fire become too weak. There's still the initial effect for starting them in the zone/wall, then the movement interference, and still a decent chance to push them back into the wall (and then they probably start in the wall again, taking more damage).

And the wall of fire should be gone anyway, because you can't Delay and Sustain a power. But it's a little late for that, don't you think?

 

[Graf]

This is just my opinion. I'm not saying you're wrong or anything, I just don't see the arguement as being particularly well supported.

I realize that 3.x was the era of pun-pun; I just don't think that continuing that was a design goal of 4e.
[sblock=kibbitz]I kinda see your map as an example of "reading tiny little bits of text is weird ways".

1. I don't think that's what people think of when they think of push
2. For that matter, my reading of push is that you have to keep moving glib further away with each pushed square. There are multiple squares that are the same distance from the origin, which would require slide, no?

Maybe it's an abusive combination and will get errata'd at some point. But I think it probably works the way it'd work if you think about it.

I'm not sure why say... a wall of fire is supposed to have this special rule that overrides the normal forced movement rules (which override the normal movement rules) but say... cloud of daggers doesn't.
(if that's what your saying...)

If that was the intent... wouldn't they say it somewhere? Generally when an exception has an exception they call it out in the books (not always but...); If that were really a design goal they would probably just say "you can only take damage from a wall/area of effect once per turn".

Like with the whole Come-and-Get=slide arguement that everybody was so excited about. Effectively it grants a free attack to all adjacent foes. I kinda made the arguement that that made no sense and that powers that grant adjacent allies free attacks say so... but there was the fixation on the word shift to the exclusion of thinking about how the system works.

Again here, if you were only supposed to do damage with a power once a round, instead of burying that "rule" in some sort of arcane structure of exceptions I think they'd just say. "Only does damage once a round" or Under Forced Movement they'd just say "you can't push your target into a given effect that causes damage more than once with a single forced move".

The whole "OK, so now this exception is going to interact with push in some way that isn't mentioned in any direct way in the rules to prevent this abuse" arguement seems.... to me.... to sort of miss how 4e works.

Some power combos are better than others. If this is abusive it'll be errata'd in some fashion but I don't think they'll "errata" it with a complicated, obscure multi-tiered system consisting of a bunch of interlocking (but never explicitly explained or stated) power exceptions.
[/sblock]

 

[Graf]

Wouldn't it be a lot easier to just say
*You must Push/Slide a directly toward the target square

Or something similar?
Instead of saying the +1 from walls does effect forced movement even though other things don't.

It would more directly deal with the issue and be a lot clearer.

Basically what I'm saying is that if that was the RAI then I think there will be errata to that effect. Like there was with Come-and-Get-it; until then we should feel comfortable just saying "do it the obvious way" without having to get bogged down with very complex arguments about very specific little pieces of english that someone threw together at 4am before a deadline.

 

[renau1g]

Like I said in the rules thread, the DMG rules for forced movement allow saves in much broader conditions than pits and lava. Right now, I have to say that I'm leaning towards allowing saves for most walls and zones.

Do you really think it was intended and balanced that you could push or slide into and out of the wall of fire repeatly to inflict multiples of its damage?

Although it might make us a little less effective it also prevents an enemy with that power from inflicting such torment (no pun intended) on us. Additionally, the above reasoning is my thinking as well, walls are made by the controllers right? So I think the RAI is that they are meant to control the battlefield by preventing an enemy from approaching without taking additional damage.

 

[covaithe]

Eh. I'm convinced that a save is allowed for going prone instead of being forced into a wall. I'm less convinced that it's not possible to get the wall to do damage more than once in a turn.

Wall of Fire's text and Storm Cage's text are different in interesting ways:

Storm Cage: "Any creature that starts its turn adjacent to the wall or moves into a wall square takes 10 lightning damage. Moving into a wall square costs 1 extra square of movement."

Wall of Fire: "If a creature moves into the wall’s space or starts its turn there, the creature takes 3d6 + Intelligence modifier fire damage."

Which suggests to me that storm cage does damage every time you enter any square of the wall, but WoF only does so on entering the wall's area from outside of it. Typo, or design decision? Searching the Compendium for "wall", I can't find any other powers phrased like storm cage. There are several phrased similarly to WoF.

I think my interpretation of Victim's map that pushes Glib through the wall three times is that the path described would take 16 squares of pushing, and would give Glib 3 saves, but would offer three damage rolls.

Not that any of that matters for this combat, but the storm cage wall thing might well come up again later.

 

[Victim]

Okay, the end of round 4 is up.

 

[Evilhalfling]

13 Mantle of Glory (encounter)+14 vs will (2d10+10); allies can spend surge, close blast 5
6 Bastion of Health(encounter, minor) ; Range 10; target spends surge +13 hp (@glib)

I can get a heal to everyone, by moving n, ne ; leaving me with 1 encounter power left.

 

[Graf]

Yay for healing! But I just moved nearer to you so don't get any closer to that mess than you have to.

I think leaving BB2 with Glib and having Xax and Narbel go beat on mr. I'm-an-elite-with-a-field-of-damage-stormrage-shambler is a good idea. That field is just annoying.

The battle briar is now blinded so Xax can move without provoking OAs. And glib will have CA through his next turn (better defenses, and can move and sneak with impunity). I think I have a reasonablly good chance of finishing it off solo (or making it so that someone can arrow/mm it to death....)

Oh, and rogue is the best class ever.
This is more fun than I've had in ages.

 

[Victim]

BB 2 dies from Glib's attack, so it's very safe for Xak to move.

I'll need a retarget from Dalamar, since his target is dead by his turn. I think his 18 still misses everything though.

This encounter should be over soon. I'm going to start working on map 2 right away, but there will be a delay for a few days for people to provide feedback and otherwise discuss the first encounter - especially since I'll be providing extra information and some of my own thoughts. That will also be a good time for the group to provide initiative for the next encounter and to work out your initial formation. We can take longer if some serious issues pop up, but I like to keep the game moving quickly.

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As far as the whole wall thing goes, I'm going to allow saves to avoid being forced into wall squares.

IIRC, I did apply the Stormcage per square for the Briar Witch Dryad. Since she stayed inside the wall of fire, instead of bouncing in and out, she only took the damaging for entering it once. And then burned again on her turn for starting in it.

Quite frankly, the whole "extra movement costs that aren't difficult terrain apply to forced movement" issue that was brought up surprised me. I had never really considered that - extra movement costs are pretty much like difficult terrain, and I figured that forced movement stays at 1 for 1. It does make it more difficult to inflict the damage multiple times by bouncing targets in and out, or flinging into the full length of a stormcage wall.

On the other hand, it seems like it'd devalue a lot of small forced movement effects, since even repeated Push 1s (from say Tide of Iron... Which no one in this game actually has) won't be able to overcome that 4 square hump.

BTW Graf, you're misinterpreting the old text on Come and Get It. As a general rule, the shift from the power wouldn't provoke attacks since it's a shift - it would only invite an attack from special anti-shift abilities like the fighter's Combat Challenge. So not exactly a ton of free attacks. And, while shifting has some downsides, it also provides advantages for the monsters that have to come and get smacked in the face. Since the enemy is in control of the movement. So a melee enemy might make a valid shift into the only square another enemy can reach, protecting that creature from the pull/shift and attack. It's not like it was broken before when it was a shift, but it was just sort of a weird mechanical redundancy - that's what pull is for. There should be some sort of two off semi-forced shift thing.