D&D 4E 4e Ranger: New God of Damage? Armor Splinter + Blade Cascade + High Wisdom Ranger
- Thread starter Lore Raithbone
- Start date
Nifft said:
... a lvl 33 solo is supposed to be a challenge for a 33th level party.
How is killing a monster in 1-2 rounds a challenge? Sure, you can say "that's not as broken as I expected", but the PCs are clearly not supposed to kill him on the spot. If they were, Blade Cascade wouldn't be the clear winner in terms of raw damage.
The power is available since 15th level; this means a 15th level ranger can end 1 encounter per day against a solo monster of his level with just 1 daily.
I usually help my players optimize their characters when I dm, but this power is just over the top, as written.
It's not something that becomes broken when the pcs exploit some crazy synergy...It just breaks the game when a character that's been built properly makes a legitimate use of it.
Obviously, I may be wrong, but unless you can find another power that can deal 40x your regular damage ( even 30x your regular damage would be fine), I'll just assume that there's some typo in the power's description, and that it will be errata'ed ASAP.
Actually Orcus is a primordial and peer to lesser deities. He should be able to defeat a mere demigod (as a matter of fact, Doresain the demigod of ghouls is his servant)Nifft said:
Anyway, to fix the power I would suggest: Look how many [W] the most powerfull lvl 30 daily does and cap the power at this point. So a lucky (or prepared) lvl 15 ranger can get a taste of what he will be able to do at lvl 30 but the lvl 15 power will no longer be the most devasting option in the arsenal of the lvl 30 demigod
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Because thats where 4e is placing the gods. Epic PCs are supposed to be able to challenge, fight and defeat them in 4e. For the upper tiers of deities they need some plot device to weaken them down closer to lvl 30, for the lower tiers of deities they can fight them even without plot devicesNifft said:
One designer talked about Moradin and how he's lvl 38 solo because he's one of the most powerfull greater gods. And Orcus is more on the level of a lesser god and thus only lvl 33 solo (Doresain, as an exarch (4e term for demigod) is only lvl 27 elite, not even solo)
Nifft
Penguin Herder
Breaking Cascade at 15th level uses a party, and at that level it well may be broken. But I just can't get excited about a 30th level PC being broken. It seems like that is the point of 30th level. When you get there, you're supposed to have "won".Njall said:
Okay.Njall said:
Cheers, -- N
robertliguori
First Post
That's an interesting proposal. Would you care to post a critique of one of the example builds and note the weaknesses in their capacities and defenses?JohnSnow said:
Pointe the first: it's that bonus multiplier that's the killer. Multipliers are scarce in 4E, but flat damage bonuses aren't; this accentuates the effects of multipliers.
Pointe the second: It is possible to get rerolls any number of ways, and the rerolls are the real killer. Rerolls effectively act like multipliers on multipliers; seven chained attacks plus a reroll at +2 (like elves can get) adds another 13 expected attacks. Moreover, the more rerolls and the higher the numbers, the flatter the prediction becomes, and the less risk is involved.
They focused on happy-path optimization versus protecting the system. That is to say, they came up with a set of assumptions (a party will fulfill these rolls over five members, they will have this amount of treasure, they will have this many combats before resting, characters will be built to be versatile, players will choose exciting over numerically optimal), and then debugged the heck out of that scenario. However, change any of the assumptions, and the debugging is no longer perfect.
Moreover, there are a lot of examples of simple poor design present in 4E. One example is the tarrasque's grounding aura. At first glimpse, it appears to be the perfect thing against fliers; however, a second glimpse reveals the presence of the Far Shot feat, which, combined with a longbow and a flying creature, re-enabled the kiting of the tarrasque. The design intent was clear for the ability; hovering above the tarrasque's head and plinking away at it until it dies was not meant to be the optimal way of killing it. However, a fundamental truth of numeric and logical universes is that if you can reduce your opponent's offensive options to zero, he can't win, and if you can do so while leaving yourself an offensive option, you will win by attrition.
Likewise, it is a fundamental truth that multiplication increases faster than addition. If you optimize a multiplicative ability, you will see better returns than if you optimize an additive one. You can add various confounding factors, but in general, force multipliers (both literal and figurative) have always been the way to victory.
Given this, a better way to design for the Tarrasque would have been to give it an ability to affect flyers (perhaps an aura of fear that started doing psychic damage if you were exposed to it too long at a stretch, giving advantage to people on the ground who could duck behind cover), and a better design for Cascade would have been to not allow for open-ended multiplication.
robertliguori said:
To be fair to the Big T, you might (given thousands of arrows) be able to plink him to death eventually with Far Shot, but probably not before he makes the town of Nerluc look like a moonscape, to the chagrin of its hapless inhabitants.
Stopping the Tarrasque is not the issue (it always gets stopped, or else there wouldn't be a world at all)... stopping it before it rearranges your entire kingdom is the issue.
Nifft said:
No. This kind of thinking is what led to the ELH being the broken, buggy pile of crap that it was. "Winning" just means that 99.[many 9's]% of the population of the multiverse is less awesome than you. It does not mean that for the 0.[many 0's]1% which is on par with you, that encounters should be trivial or decided before they've begun.
In the long term, people WILL get characters up to super-high levels, and they'll want encounters to be as exciting and challenging as always. Witness people killing Kyuss and Demogorgon in the Paizo APs. The system should assume that Kyuss and Demogorgon will be decent opponents at the top end, not creatures that you can roll over in 1-2 rounds.
