Down to At-Wills

[Kzach]

I addressed this in another thread but will repeat my opinion here since it's so incredibly valid and I think everyone wants to hear me speak.

Basically, I think this is really a matter of perception and getting used to the differences of 4e. A 4e character without their dailies and encounter powers is still a powerhouse of options, especially compared to their 3.x counterparts. Hell, let's even take away their action point and leave out the entire notion that these are all options they have above their 3.x companions. And, just to be fair to 3.x, let's also not include what options you have with your skills in combat, as we know there will be options, but we haven't seen them yet.

Take a look at the fighter pregen and its abilities without action points, skill usage, dailies or encounter powers:

Fighter

1. Cast-Iron Stomach (+5 to saving throws vs. poison)
2. Dwarven Resilience (use second wind as a minor action)
3. Stand Your Ground (move 1 square less when subject to a push, pull, or slide; when knocked prone make an immediate saving throw to stay standing)
4. Combat Challenge (when you attack you may mark the enemy, giving a -2 to attack targets other than you, only one mark per enemy, new mark supersedes old one)
5. Combat Challenge (when an adjacent enemy shifts, make an immediate melee basic attack against them)
6. Combat Superiority (+2 to opportunity attacks and enemies hit stop moving if a move provoked the attack)
7. Cleave: You hit one enemy, then cleave into another.
8. Tide of Iron: After each mighty swing, you bring your shield to bear and use it to push your enemy back.

With just those abilities you have a ton of tactical options in a fight. You can manoeuvre an enemy into an disadvantageous position, possibly forcing it to move back in it's round and thus provoking an attack from you. You can keep an enemy pinned to a spot whilst others deal with someone else. You can heal yourself and still attack in a round, saving the cleric an action. You can attack an enemy and mark them, making it harder for them to hit an ally. You can resist being pushed around by your enemies and still shrug off poisons.

If you're not seeing the possibilities, then I put it to you that you're not trying hard enough

 

[Jack Colby]

I agree with Kzach. Also, I don't think this will be a problem for anyone once the full rulebooks are out and the game can be understood in it's entirety. Why judge it based on a very limited demo adventure consisting of a few combats, played by people who are not fully familiar with the rules yet?

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

As far as I can see it's to do with players seeing a Dragon and just hitting it with everything and hoping it dies - rather than using their abilities to best effect.

If every character uses action points to unleash their encounter and daily powers in one round, then yes, the rest of the combat will seem a little pedestrian. But it doesn't really get you anywhere so it's better to use it at a more opportune moment, for example when flanking or when granted a bonus by a colleague.

 

[Morrus]

I addressed this in another thread but will repeat my opinion here since it's so incredibly valid and I think everyone wants to hear me speak.

Basically, I think this is really a matter of perception and getting used to the differences of 4e. A 4e character without their dailies and encounter powers is still a powerhouse of options, especially compared to their 3.x counterparts. Hell, let's even take away their action point and leave out the entire notion that these are all options they have above their 3.x companions. And, just to be fair to 3.x, let's also not include what options you have with your skills in combat, as we know there will be options, but we haven't seen them yet.

Take a look at the fighter pregen and its abilities without action points, skill usage, dailies or encounter powers:

Fighter

1. Cast-Iron Stomach (+5 to saving throws vs. poison)
2. Dwarven Resilience (use second wind as a minor action)
3. Stand Your Ground (move 1 square less when subject to a push, pull, or slide; when knocked prone make an immediate saving throw to stay standing)
4. Combat Challenge (when you attack you may mark the enemy, giving a -2 to attack targets other than you, only one mark per enemy, new mark supersedes old one)
5. Combat Challenge (when an adjacent enemy shifts, make an immediate melee basic attack against them)
6. Combat Superiority (+2 to opportunity attacks and enemies hit stop moving if a move provoked the attack)
7. Cleave: You hit one enemy, then cleave into another.
8. Tide of Iron: After each mighty swing, you bring your shield to bear and use it to push your enemy back.

With just those abilities you have a ton of tactical options in a fight. You can manoeuvre an enemy into an disadvantageous position, possibly forcing it to move back in it's round and thus provoking an attack from you. You can keep an enemy pinned to a spot whilst others deal with someone else. You can heal yourself and still attack in a round, saving the cleric an action. You can attack an enemy and mark them, making it harder for them to hit an ally. You can resist being pushed around by your enemies and still shrug off poisons.

If you're not seeing the possibilities, then I put it to you that you're not trying hard enough

The fighter is, notably, the one with the most options in the demo adventure situation. Now take the warlock and list the at-will options, giving a reason why anyone would use them rather than Eyebite. For the record, the dragon's defences are: Will 18, Ref 21, AC 24.

There's simply no point using anything other than Eyebite, which is the at-will which targets Will.

 

[Cadfan]

To attack, right. But that doesn't mean he's got nothing else to do. He's got an ability that gives him concealment if he moves, so he wants to keep mobile for rounds when Eyebite doesn't take.

 

[Kzach]

There's simply no point using anything other than Eyebite, which is the at-will which targets Will.

Well, I would say it's a choice to do less damage but hit more often and not that there's no point in trying to do more damage with less of a chance to hit. It's much like saying there's no point in using Power Attack in 3.x when you've got +3 BAB because you have -3 to hit.

I'd say that's a subjective viewpoint, not an absolute.

I'm assuming the dragon wasn't just sitting statically and waiting to get hit every round either, so I might've tried positioning myself so that a readied action would mean I'd get my +1 to hit if it came close to me.

Or you could've tried to talk to it, what with that +1 to Diplomacy

 

[marune]

I think a simple solution is just in the way the players speak. A game where everyone goes "I hit him" can get boring. But a game in which people say things like "I swipe at his left side with my sword" and the next round "I follow through with an over hand sword strike" can liven things up even though it is the exact same mechanically.

What ? You mean that we could "roleplay" in combat ???

 

[TerraDave]

I agree its not much of an issue, especially compared to past editions. If you were playing a 3E Warlock, it could easily be that you would just keep eldrich blasting the dragon. Its true a 3E wizard would be forced to throw different spells at it, but if that wizard had a choice (was more like a sorcerer) then you might just keep throwing the same spell at it.

More generally, 4E opens up options by:

-making most things standard (or minor!) actions vs. full round actions. You almost always have a move or something else you can do in addition to the attack.

-making it easier to move around (1-1 diagnols, less OA via reach, movement related powers...)

-giving at least two at wills to choose from

-all those other options. Encounters, dailies, the action point, the second wind, the additional stuff that some classes and races get...

Its true that 3E had a lot of options in theory (grapple, disarm, metamagic..) but in practice tactics tended to get repetative (full attack, tumble to flank and sneak attack, cast the most powerful spell left). From what I have seen, your effective 4E options will be greater then or equal to your 3E options.

 

[Imban]

In 3e, nearly every fight, the barbarian raged and charged, then 5' step full attack, repeat. Fighter same thing, minus the rage, etc. That's all been gone on about for years.

In 4e, it can take 6+ rounds for even a low level character to run out of encounters, dailies, action points and other options and be down to just his at wills. At that point, the fight has been a knock down, drag out battle.

From everything I've noticed, 4e has a lot more 6+ round fights than 3e. While some people certainly prefer this to the rocket-launcher tag of 3e, and understandably so, it means that many fights are knock-down, drag-out battles.

Certainly a drawn-out 3e fight would likely be repetitive, especially if players were non-ToB fighter types, but when most fights are over before the end of round the third and effectively all are over by the time everyone has taken 4 actions, but 3e did not really lend itself to drawn-out fights.

So basically, sure, in 3e some people are doing the same thing every round for 3 rounds, and in bad cases for 6 rounds. In 4e everyone is doing something interesting for 5 rounds, which can get you through most fights... except for the 20-round knock-down drag-out fights we've heard about in multiple previews, in which people are doing the same thing for 15 rounds, when that not happening is supposed to be a strength of 4e.

 

[AllisterH]

So basically, sure, in 3e some people are doing the same thing every round for 3 rounds, and in bad cases for 6 rounds. In 4e everyone is doing something interesting for 5 rounds, which can get you through most fights... except for the 20-round knock-down drag-out fights we've heard about in multiple previews, in which people are doing the same thing for 15 rounds, when that not happening is supposed to be a strength of 4e.

I think the blame for that lies on people relishing the use of a single monster that is significantly outside of their range (greater than a level 5 difference). Hopefully the DMG talks about monster encounters and the pitfalls behind sinle only monsters (especially if they are non-solo/non-elite monsters)

A much quicker and dynamic fight would be to use two lower level elites or a combination of elite and sinlge monsters.