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Message: <blockquote data-quote="hailstop" data-source="post: 4932861" data-attributes="member: 62201">FYI, I DM a 4e game and have been since it came out. As for damage output, the thing you have to realize is that the roles, while some don't like them, do actually mean something in generalizing what they do. Your Warlord is a member of the Leader role.  Often the classes have a secondary role based on their build.  The PHB2 describes what that secondary role is, but the earlier products it's not as obivous.  For instance, a Fighter is primarily a defender (which gets in the way of monsters getting to the squish guys in the back), but secondarily can be a striker due to his high hit bonus and damage (like the Fighter in my campaign). Wizards are now controllers who can deal damage to multiple targets (ie 3 or more).  Unlike earlier editions, the Wizards don't do the massive damage they used to.  However, if they can hit many creatures, they can end up doing more damage than anyone else...just not to any individual creature. Leaders like Warlords and Clerics give the boosts to AC, attack bonuses and such, as well as do the healing.  However, they do the least amount of damage on any given attack (although the Shaman has a striker secondary role). For doing massive amounts of damage to one monster, the strikers are king.  Often they get additional dice damage to a single monster, above and beyond any of their powers.  Strikers can easily do more damage using their at-wills than say, Leaders doing their dailies.  But that's okay...since doing damage is what strikers are supposed to do. As far as grind goes, there are a couple of reasons for it.  One is that combats tend to be less swingy than they were before...and it's a rare combat against that doesn't go 5-8 rounds.  The second is that it's taken about a year to really appreciate the real-world experience with Solos and Elites.  Under the earlier rules they both got bonuses to their defenses...and high level Solos got 5x as many hp.  However, combats often got to the point that all the PC's encounter and daily powers were used up and they were relying on their at-wills which don't do much damage.  Meanwhile, the Elites (especially ones made with templates) and Solos often don't have enough standard actions to properly be an offensive threat to the party.   Adding Solo Soldiers made it worse (since they have better defenses and as such lots of effects that only come into effect on a hit wouldn't be realized).  Make those solos higher level than the party and it gets even worse.  Some of these problems have been fixed with the MM2 and DMG2. Some solutions are to cut monster hp by 25% and add 1/2 level of the monster to damage by the monsters.  This makes the combat a bit more swingy.   For more challenging encounters, don't have 5 creatures of higher levels...have creatures of the same level as the party...but add more creatures.  It's the number of standard actions that ultimately determines the challenge to the PCs at least as far as death goes.  Lots of higher level foes just makes it more difficult for hte PC's to hit them..the offensive challenge is only increased really by the monsters hitting the PC's more often.  But 8 monsters instead of 5, even if they're of equal level can get nasty.   As for damage dealt...I think my Ranger player frequently gets an attack that does 3d8 damage (and he gets two attacks that can do that damage)...plus 2d8 additional damage once.   I've seen critical hits do 60 hp.   However, monsters have quite a bit more hp themselves, something on the order of 100-130 depending on the monster role...and quadruple that for solos.</blockquote>

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