Ampersand: Sneak Attack

[Doug McCrae]

Since 99% of my criticisms of 4e have been answered with "Well, houserule it" or "The DM can just...", PETA needs to look into some of 4e's more ardent defenders.

It's a valid answer to the extreme subjectivism of many of the 4e hatorz. They seem to be saying, "This isn't what I want in a game, therefore it shouldn't be in D&D."

Which is ridiculous. What's in D&D should be based on market research. It should be the tyranny of the majority. House ruling is the best solution for the individual here.

But if a complaint about a rule is that it doesn't work for anyone, or for the majority, then house ruling isn't a valid solution.

 

[hong]

So, a 3e Rogue getting +5 on all dex-based skills (20 dex) by 20th level

A 3E rogue with 20 Dex at 20th level isn't even trying. Try 30 Dex.

bothers you more than a 4e Rogue getting +10 on ALL skills by 20th level? The +1/2 level bonuses inflate competence more than high stats did, and stats still add to skills....

Nobody said anything about inflating competence. The point was about inflating ability scores, to the point where they're almost surreal.

 

[HeinorNY]

Which poses its own kind of problem as it looks like that classes have a very narrow list of what they can become trained in. (People who own SW told me this is also true in SAGA).
So when you play a fighter you can never really be good at stealth because its not on your class list unless you spend feats for it (which could have been used for combat techniques)
Thats the same problem as in 3E.

So it's problem that a character needs to ivnest resources to be good at something?
I see no problem with a fighter having to invest resources(feat) to be good at something that's not part of his class' concept.

That's the problem in 4E, 3E and in real life.
It's called priority.

 

[Sir Brennen]

OMG. I already found something totally broken! Armor is now worthless if you are fighting a rogue. At will they can AUTOMATICALLY bypass your armor! AUTOMATICALLY. Well I can guess people will be saying how totally screwed over Fighters are by the current edition... all over again! [...] I guess I could infer that some Kewl Powerz are better than the ability to bypass armor, which is why it is not used so much-- but I stand by my statement that the ability to automatically bypass armor at will makes armor useless vs. that opponent.

I think Anax summed it up pretty good:

On the power of "Piercing Strike": A number of people have noted that because Reflex defense is not going to be as atrophied in most characters as Touch AC was in 3E, this is less powerful than it might otherwise seem. Someone else pointed out that if Power Attack cannot be used with Piercing Strike for some reason, that removes an additional big chunk of power. I would suggest that one reason Power Attack might not be usable at the same time as Piercing Strike is that it may be a power rather than a feat.

Even if it's not, the most likely explanation for why Piercing Strike won't be used *all the time* is that if you choose to use Piercing Strike, you can't use any other powers that round. This is a *first level* power. Chances are pretty good that you'll soon have much better things to do with your time instead of searching for a chink in your enemy's armor... at least until you come up against an enemy who's really heavily armored. Which makes it a good interesting ability, really.

4E really has a model of "opportunity cost". Piercing Strike lets you bypass armor, sure, but you can't use it with Crimson Edge, for example, because both require a standard action. You can't use it if you've already used Deft Strike to get into position. Also, Piercing Strike only does [W]+Dex damage. Unless you're already in position to do Sneak Attack damage (without using another power to do so), that's not a whole lot. Especially if you're attacking a Fighter or Brute Monster. Also, ignoring armor is not the same as automatically hitting, so the rogue might not even get in that little bit of damage.

There was another power previewed (I think there was anyway... can't seem to find it) where a ranger gets +4 on bow attacks at will. Pretty awesome, right? But that would also come at the cost of not doing added damage or crippling or some other cool trick shot.

So it basically comes down to... you can do some cool stuff, you just can't do it all at once. As someone coined in another thread, It's the Action Economy, Stupid!

 

[Lizard]

A 3E rogue with 20 Dex at 20th level isn't even trying. Try 30 Dex.

How many points does your DM give you, anyway? We use 28, which means getting an 18 at first level is nearly crippling if you don't have racial mods, then +1/4 levels.

Nobody said anything about inflating competence. The point was about inflating ability scores, to the point where they're almost surreal.

Shrug. Seems to me that all that matters is the final die roll. Does it matter if the plusses come from an obscenely-high stat or a generalized level-based competence bonus? No matter how you slice it, a 4e character will be able to do a lot more things a lot better than his 3e counterpart, and changing it from "You place stat picks in your primary stat" to "You just get better!" doesn't seem to be that big a deal to me.

 

[McBard]

As Jeff Wilder and others have noted already, the fact that damage caused will be variable and healing will be variable means there's more than enough randomness to what the fixed hit points mean when one gets into a fight.

Actually, you can have variance in HP, but still be fixed and non-random--12 HP + Con score is an example of this.

So, the fact of "randomness in the attack's damage roll" has nothing to do with the point about the fixed/non-variant nature of the 5 HP per level, and whether this non-variance bothers people.

If we can assume fairly confidently that the Con score bonus is retroactive after 1st level, then I suppose there's a bit of post-1st level variance in HP (i.e. an increase in Con score increases HP on a 1:1 basis). It's just that the flat 5 HP per level is not only non-random, it's also non-variant with regards to Con's affect on HP.

A 4E Rogue at 1st level with an 8 Con will have 20 HP. One with a 16 Con will 28 HP.
At 10th level, the 8 Con Rogue will have 65 HP, and the 16 Con Rogue will have 73 HP.

For the Rogue with the much, much higher Con (16 to 8), the difference in HP (73 to 65) just doesn't seem to reflect that.

It seems like that Con has gone from mattering too much with regards to HP in 3E, to not mattering much at all in 4E. (And, yes, I realize all this is based merely upon what info we've been given so far).

 

[Derren]

Er, do you actually know how SWSE actually works?

The difference between a Trained rogue with Stealth and an untrained fighter with Stealth in SWSE is +5 at all levels compared to the current situation by where level 2, the rogue is at +5 advantage to a fighter and where it increases.

The fighter is not exactly a helpless guy.

Except when it comes to things which require you to be trained in that skill. Stealth might not have such "tricks" but other skills have (See drothgery post).

So it's problem that a character needs to ivnest resources to be good at something?
I see no problem with a fighter having to invest resources(feat) to be good at something that's not part of his class' concept.

Using that reasoning, the 3E skill system worked too. But in reality it recieved a lot of criticism because, for example, fighters had to spend their feats on skill focus to become good on a non-fighter skill which means you have one combat feat less.
The same will apparently be happening in 4E. Either the Fighter takes Warthog power slam (to use 4E naming conventions ) or training in stealth.

3E complain: the fighter just has uninteresting class skills and it costs too much to get good in non class skills.
4E complain: The fighter has just boring skills on in his skill list in and it costs too much to get trained in a skill not on his list.

 

[Doug McCrae]

This was discussed in R&C.

Sheesh, do only us hat3rz read the actual rules pre-releases?

You bought the preview books? I'm beginning to question your hator credentials. Are you sure your heart is black with rancor?

All the way to the middle, mind, not just the outside.

 

[hong]

How many points does your DM give you, anyway? We use 28, which means getting an 18 at first level is nearly crippling if you don't have racial mods, then +1/4 levels.

+6 from an item, +5 from a tome. 760,000gp, remember?

Shrug. Seems to me that all that matters is the final die roll. Does it matter if the plusses come from an obscenely-high stat or a generalized level-based competence bonus? No matter how you slice it, a 4e character will be able to do a lot more things a lot better than his 3e counterpart, and changing it from "You place stat picks in your primary stat" to "You just get better!" doesn't seem to be that big a deal to me.

It's an aesthetic thing. I can grok someone with 20 ranks in Tumble, no problem. +10 from Dex is a bit weird.

 

[Campbell]

So, if God kills a kitten every time someone says "The DM can fix it!", what does He do when someone says "That's not a bug! That's a FEATURE!"

Just to clarify, I wasn't interested in re-opening old debates, just in pointing out that 4e's defenders have killed as many kittens as 3e's defenders...

To be fair all your examples listed above are features and not bugs. For something to be a bug its existence has to be unintentional. Trust me - I'm a programmer.

We can of course discuss the relative merits of those features.