Barbarians seem very effective, too effective?

[Iron Sky]

The DMG2 has an awesome sidebar on reducing the need for magic items in 4e. Personally I would have liked to have seen something like that factored into the core of 4e, but that's not really a reasonable hope. The ideal, IMO, would be for magic items to be nifty toys, treats for the players and the PCs, but not a necessary or automatic part of the game.

On that note, I saw they added a "automatically factored in magic items" check box in the Character Builder in the update so anyone who is running a low-magic game can still use the Character Builder without having to custom-tool everything.

I used to really enjoy coming up with custom items that really fit the PCs and made their players go "Wow, that's awesome!", and wishlists have really killed that for me.

Then don't use them?

In the one 4e campaign I played, our DM didn't really allow wishlists until we were nearly paragon. He finally caved after we ended up disenchanting several of the "custom" magic items he'd given us within minutes of getting them since they didn't fit what we had in mind for our characters. Giving out what you think is a cool item and having it rendered down to residuum within 2 minutes of the players finding it can be disheartening.

 

[keterys]

I run and play a bunch of LFR, where you don't have wishlists at all, but you can conceivably try to arrange to play modules that have items you want. It's... a bit odd in that respect, but whatever.

I also run for a group of 4 of which only one would _ever_ give me a wishlist... for that group, I go through and find things that I feel would work for their character but aren't bland or optimal (armbands, etc) then mostly give them random treasure from there with heavy choices. They're old school and they like the random treasure aspect, and they get enough options and it's pre-selected enough that it works out well for them.

In that same group, I've got one (one who wouldn't do a wishlist ever, barely knows his characters actually) guy running a game who tried doing treasure by selecting or randomly rolling stuff for us and gave up completely and just started going 'You find a 4th level bundle, you can pick what it is' cause he got tired of giving us stuff that wasn't useful to us.

In the game run by the guy who could do wishlists, he basically had us pick weapon, armor, neck for ourselves, spend a little coin (like an 8th level item's worth of gp, and we're now 12th) and then gave us some filler items from there of stuff he thought would be good, with a little bit of ability to pick our own stuff otherwise.

So yeah, no wishlists in any game I play or run. Though that DM who gave up is effectively doing a wishlist, just even lazier

 

[Saeviomagy]

I think the real problem is the amount of super powerful niche items that got added to the game. It's like the designers who worked on AV and AV2 just don't understand optimization in the slightest. Or game design for that matter.

I mean there's some good, cool, balanced stuff in there, but so much of it is awful that I think they just used the scattergun approach: put in everything you can think of and assume that your customers will handle balance for you.

That said, the "shift 2, even through foes, then attack and push someone" power kinda annoyed me when I saw it too.

 

[Jools]

To get this thread back on topic, have you guys seen the crazy new feat in the Primal Power preview? Barbarians can use their con instead of dex/int for their AC. That actually puts them in the running for highest AC in the game (on top of their crazy damage)!

 

[keterys]

... that's stupid. Barbarians specifically get a +1 per tier bonus to AC and Ref to make up for them ignoring those stats.

On the other hand, it is nice for dwarf protector shamans

Edit: Looking at the preview I wouldn't be surprised if it's not completely replacing it like the feat summary suggests (ie, if it's just giving you a partial amount from Con). There's another feat at epic for +2 more AC and that just seems totally gratuitous if they already gave you Con to AC.

 

[Eldorian]

To get this thread back on topic, have you guys seen the crazy new feat in the Primal Power preview? Barbarians can use their con instead of dex/int for their AC. That actually puts them in the running for highest AC in the game (on top of their crazy damage)!

... while simultaneously screwing over thaneborns. I'm hoping it has a limit of like +2/+3/+4 based on tier of play.

 

[brassbaboon]

I still play some 3.5e so I think I can do a quick comparison of "standard magic items" to see how 4e compares...

My 3.5e characters somehow seem to end up with the following items fairly regularly:
- pearls of power
- rods of metamagic
- rings of protection
- +X weapons
- rings of spell storing...
- wand of cure light wounds

I've only made one 4e character but comparing him with my play group, and with what I read on these boards, there sure seems to be a patter in 4e too:
- iron armbands of power (melee)
- cloak of distortion
- gauntlets of blood
- bracers of archery (ranged)
- neck item (for defense bonuses)

I can't say I see a tremendous difference in the commonality of certain magic items. If anything I'd say 3.5 has a much larger selection of "required standard magic items" that you would probably get laughed at in an RPGA game if you didn't have them. ("What, you don't have a pearl of power? What the heck is wrong with you?")

I happen to currently have a 9th level 4e ranger and a 10th level 3.5e ranger. I enjoy playing them both, but the 3.5e ranger makes tons more "sense" to me than the 4e version.

Both of them are melee/ranged mix builds. But the 3.5e ranger is much more flexible due to spells he can choose. If I feel a need to really specialize on bow, I can memorize one spell multiple times, put it in my ring of spell storing a couple more times, and use my pearl of power to recast it even more times. So once I pick a particular "best option" for my 3.5e ranger, I can use that approach six or seven times a day, and that approach can be a devastatingly damaging attack. If I want to do melee instead, I pick different spells but the end result is the same. If I want to do both, I mix them up.

This makes sense to me. In 4e I have this one really great ninth level daily power and I can use it exactly once per day. No matter what else I do, I can only do it once. I have another less powerful daily power that I can do as well, but it's not nearly as good. And then I've got other powers that I had to pick because I couldn't pick the same power more than once. The end result is that in 4e I don't have a "main tactic" that I use repeatedly, I have to use a series of different tactics and try to fit them in as best I can.

And this is where magic items come in. The 4e ranger already feels very constrained in terms of his options, but one way to get more options, and thus feel less constrained, is to use magic item encounter or daily powers. But then they are again just different powers that I again sort of have to squeeze in as best as I can.

My biggest frustration so far with 4e isn't that magic items are more "standard" as much as it is that the whole character "feel" seems so much more arbitrary, limited and constrained. When I play my 3.5e ranger I feel almost like I've been set free compared to the 4e ranger. I choose my tactic, build it into a repeatable option, and then determine how to best pull it off. If it fails the first time, oh well, I can do it five or six more times. In 4e the whole encounter feels like a race to get my encounter powers used up so I don't "waste" them, and a constant question of "is this the big one? Do I dare use my big daily on this fight?"

That just seems to be totally bizarre from a roleplaying perspective. Why can't I do these things more than once? Why does picking up a new magic weapon suddenly give me a whole new power when what I really want is just to be able to do the one thing I really want to do more than once?

As much as I like 4e, I have to admit that 3.5e still feels MUCH more like I'm playing an actual somewhat "realistic" character. 4e feels like I'm playing a card game and once I play a card, it's gone until, for some bizarre reason, I rest overnight.

 

[AllisterH]

Hmm...

I tend to like the encounter format since from my viewpoint, I always saw the "spamming" as just being plain weird.

I mean, the classic Trip monkey always left me scratching my head since the first time the opponent got tripped, shouldn't he be on the lookout for that trick again?

But you can literally do it FOREVER and the opponent doesn't/can't change tactics?

I do like that there are options to recharge encounter powers since to me, the image of a fighter who uses move a, then couple rounds later uses move a again I have no problem with as imagery.

The spamming reminded so much of a videogame (classic fireball spammer and really, who loses to any kid that plays the shotokan brothers like that?)

 

[UngeheuerLich]

I don´t believe thanborne are too screwed... a good spell vs will screws still screws the rageblood.

His problem is having 3 bad defenses if you may con and str. Even with this feat you are left with 2 low defenses... (your barabarian bonus negates the loss of a shield)

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I found the biggest achilles heel to the Barbarian are his defenses and his ability to avoid or shrug off conditions. You need someone keeping an eye for him - or spend feat slots on better armor and defenses to compensate. Especially the Rageblood Barbarian will suffer from this, since Strength and Constitution go to the same defense.

A Barbarian that is regularly dazed, stunned or immobilized will feel very useless, soon.