D&D 4E Forked Thread: Some Thoughts on 4e

[Verision]

Deleted

 

[WalterKovacs]

Sleep
Web
Hold person
Polymorph Other
Maze

Just a few off the top of my head. Killing and incapacitating are not identical unless a thirst for blood is the primary motivator to every combat.

Well, in 4e all damage can be chosen to be non-lethal if they want it to be that way, thus it's entirely up to the players to decide if they are trying to kill their enemies or "knock them out/incapacitate".

And, many of those are essentally "save or might as well die". An effect that takes someone out of the fight for quite a long time if they don't save.

Out of the 4e PHB:

Sleep is hard to pull off, true, but an orb wizard can almost assuredly take out a single foe with it [without having to take multiple iterations of the same spell while going up in levels]. Now, it does require coup de gras'ing the guy to make it permanent since, especially an elite or solo is going to get out of it, but basically it's making someone sleep and beating them up to keep them unconcious. Not as "hands off" as the old wizard, but it's not a "one spell and we are done.". Also, once someone fails the save, you have a whole round until they get another save, and even then, they only save at the END of their turn. So, if the idea is to rob them or run away you do have quite a head start on the guys that failed the saves.

Web - deals no damage, creates an area that is constantly immobilizing foes and even when not immobilized is hard to move through. Using some movement effects [thunderwave, not to mention your allies], you can put someone back in the web to keep them out of melee

Ottiluke's resilient sphere - One hit, the guy is inside for the encounter ... or until a total of 100 damage is done to the sphere, which still takes him out of the fight for a while. If the rest of his buddies are taken care of by the time he's out ... he may go quietly.

The new maze does do some damage [again, which can per RAW, be lethal or non-lethal] but it also puts them away for a few turns, although it's made to eventually let them out, likely after 2 or 3 turns. The time it takes in many fights though, he may be the last man standing when he gets out.

The Will based parts of the prismatic effects don't do damage, and based on the breakdowns that have been done, it's the most likely to hit against most monsters.

While everything has damage with it ... there are a number of effects that incapacitate creatures, albeit temporarily.

They eliminated "If this spell hits/you fail this save, you are out of the fight" effects, and made them either "fail multiple saves in a row" or "lasts only so long" type of effects. The damage you "happen" to do while keeping someone out of the fight may be enough to bloody them and allow them to surrender through intimidation, or the monster/villain/NPC runs away because the rest of his allies were incapacitated.

The fights are so fast, relatively speaking, that incapacitation is merely, you soundly beat them in a skirmish and they surrender realizing if you weren't pulling your punches they'd be dead, etc ...

It's only hack and slash if you choose it to be that way. If the party wants to take the bad guys back to town so they can face justice, if they want to release the wandering beasts back into the wild etc, it can go that way to. And the DM could incorporate consequences of peaceful PCs [recurring foes] just as easily as bloodthirsty ones [perhaps authorities on their trail, and if that fight goes badly, suddenly their reputation in urban areas may take a hit].

It's one thing to say that 4e is a certain way, but you can't really prove your point by ignoring things that do exist.

And wizards having mostly daily utility powers ... well, that is ALL they had in 3, although they could prepare the same power multiple times [which they can't do now ... however the wizard, more than any other class, has ways to get multiple uses out of their dailies thanks to various higher tier feats and such.]

 

[HighTemplar]

Non-lethal damage? Almost non-existent in 4E. 4E is about combat to the death. Every time.

I see your point, but this might change your game...

Knocking Creatures
Unconscious​

When you reduce a creature to 0 hit points or fewer, you
can choose to knock it unconscious rather than kill it.
Until it regains hit points, the creature is unconscious but
not dying. Any healing makes the creature conscious.
If the creature doesn’t receive any healing, it is
restored to 1 hit point and becomes conscious after a
short rest.​

Or it could be... you know magic? =)

lol
Damned these games that require imagination​

 

[ExploderWizard]

Ok. Took me a while to get home While non-lethal damage can be dealt at will (which is absurd in the fireball example) that doesn't stop the need to GRIND..............THROUGH..............EVERY.................HITPOINT.

Its rather funny that the incapacitating spells of previous editions are not needed there as much as they are in 4E. I can live with reducing a kobold via hit points in combat when hp are 1-4 or bit more. 26 hit points is just plain boring to chew through at 1st level. Combat loses its fun after the nth kobold encounter with indestructible little buggers.

OK rant over, I'm off to the Shadowfell now to see how many hours it will take to polish off another dozen or so kobolds.

 

[KarinsDad]

To paraphrase what you said here: "You're not playing the game right, which proves that 4e sucks"

I never once said that. I said that he had to change the rules to get the effect he wanted due to the fact that there are so few non-damaging combat spells in 4E.

Did you read the wizard's spells? Sleep comes to mind, and, if you are an orb wizard, it works for most of your career. (again, read the books)

How about web? Wizard Attack 5:

...

Wizard Utility 6: Wall of Fog

...

I'm not going to go through all the Wizard spells, but there are a few I thought of off the top of my head. Your basic gripe here seems to be that many status effecting spells only last until the end of your next turn or save ends, and therefor 4e magic = bad.

Did you read the wizard's spells?

There are 4 cantrips which are of extremely limited use.

There are 0 out of 5 At Wills that are not damage spells.

There are 3 out of 30 Encounters that are not damage spells (and Jump competes with Shield, so it's really 2 possible on any given day).

There are 21 out of 46 Dailies that are not damage spells.

So yes, the Wizard can do a few miscellaneous spells, the vast majority of them Dailies. But a fairly solid 90% or more of spells that are cast on any given day (since the Dailies can only be cast once and tend to be saved for when really needed anyway) for most Wizards will be damaging spells.

The player of the Wizard does not have a choice. He is limited in how many Encounter and Daily non-damaging spells he can even cast on any given day and the rest of the spells he will be casting are At Wills or Encounter damaging spells.

Have you even played 4e with a fighter? Attacks of Opportunity much? Rogues get to deal damage once per turn. Fighters should get at least one AoO every round; more if you are playing them correctly (that's the "multiple attacks per round per encounter part") .

Maybe you are overly generous. But, Fighters should rarely get OAs. They can only have one marked foe (outside of their turn) unless they do a multi-foe attack (or use high level powers). Each foe is not forced to shift (push, pull, or slide is not shift and does not provoke OAs) or to attack someone other than the Fighter, and the mark only lasts for a round.

Multi-foe attacks are not At Wills (Cleave can only combat challenge one foe), so most of the time, a Fighter should have at most one foe marked. For example, a Secondary Target on a To Hit is not a multi-foe attack unless the first attack hits. And even if he does have more than one foe marked, it should rarely result in an OA.

This also assumes that foes do not just avoid the Fighter in the first place. Why would foes congregate and attack heavily armored PCs when lighter armored PCs appear to be easier? It's real easy to diagonally move around a Fighter.

Seriously, in the game I'm running there are two strikers (ranger and warlock) and even though they do more damge per hit than my DMPC fighter, my fighter does almost the same amount of damage overall since he tends to get at least one AoO per turn (usually 1-3).

1-3 ??? That's skewed.

You must be helping out your PCs with DM funneling foes towards the Fighter and DM having the NPCs shift/attack someone else.

 

[WalterKovacs]

True, the monsters can be ULTRA conservative and avoid OAs [and the fighter's interupt] at all costs. That does mean attacking the heaviest armored guy and not moving away from him. So, the fighter's ability means either they get stuck wasting time on the fighter OR they let him take a swing at them.

The fighter has the ability to move towards the monsters ... in fact he isn't forced to not move in order to get lots of attacks.

The number of attacks the poster is saying is quite high, but it is very possible to get your mark based attack to work, especially with it being in the monsters best interest to try and take down a character with lower AC, that does more damage, and has less hit points. Attacking the fighter is normally a bad idea, he will probably have a good AC at least, and can absorb a lot of damage UNLESS you swarm him, so getting stuck with him is basically keeping you out of the fight.

The fighter isn't guaranteed more damage. He EITHER does more damage or gets to force the monsters to make BAD decisions. When the monsters make bad decisions to avoid getting hit, they might live longer, but they will accomplish a lot less in their time on this earth.

Sometimes it's a no brainer to attack the person that marked you. Other times, it's in your best interest to take the potential hit and the -2 to try to go after someone else, or to get away from the fighter. Also, there are some [very few admitedly] monsters that, for example, enter a rage when bloodied and they HAVE to act in a certain way.

 

[Benimoto]

"We are getting killed here, do something Wizard" "Ok, I'll use my Knock scroll to open this back door here so that we can run, oh, nevermind. I cannot use miscellaneous spells in combat, guess I'll use Scorching Burst yet again"

Ready for the second rant about knock scrolls? Like what even is a knock scroll but a chime of opening that's cheaper because only the wizard can use it?

What are scrolls for in general? They're for the spells that you don't really want to memorize because they're only very situationally useful. And what are those spells? They're traps! They're right there on the page with the rest of the spells, but they're not as effective.

This is the big thing that 4e has done. It's ditched all the spells that were traps. As a result, you don't have them in your spellbook to make scrolls, true. It makes the wizard easier to play because you don't have to spend a lot of time reading all the spells just to find out which ones are effective. But, if you found that fun and rewarding (and I admit, I did), then 4e is less fun in that way.

And, since all those spells aren't there, they aren't stepping on the feet of every other magic item, skill or class ability.

Okay, rant over.

 

[AndrewRogue]

I feel the need to say this as a generalized statement.

Abilities that can completely incapacitate a foe without grinding through HP are, in general, far too strong. There's a reason damage dealing for casters in 3.X is generally considered an inferior option. Save (or No Save) or Lose is far more efficient and effective.

Seriously, if your option is to defeat your opponent through attrition or to do it immediately with minimal fuss, why would you not choose the latter? The only way to balance this out in game form is to give the damage dealers such ridiculous numbers that their options are just as good as being able to potentially immediately remove an opponent from combat.

So... yeah. Frankly, I want to know. Why is having to defeat each opponent actually a problem?

If it is, then what sort of balance mechanism are you to instate to equalize the field between classes that have to do damage to triumph and classes that can do it without doing such?

 

[Milambus]

Did you read the wizard's spells?

There are 4 cantrips which are of extremely limited use.

There are 0 out of 5 At Wills that are not damage spells.

There are 3 out of 30 Encounters that are not damage spells (and Jump competes with Shield, so it's really 2 possible on any given day).

There are 21 out of 46 Dailies that are not damage spells.

So yes, the Wizard can do a few miscellaneous spells, the vast majority of them Dailies. But a fairly solid 90% or more of spells that are cast on any given day (since the Dailies can only be cast once and tend to be saved for when really needed anyway) for most Wizards will be damaging spells.

I actually went and counted how many damaging vs non-damaging spells a wizard would have each day. Its pretty consistently ~50%. If you decide to not count the cantrips (which seem to have been given to you specifically to bring your total up to 50%), then you start at 0% and end with 33%.

Spells per level
L = Level
C = Cantrip
A = At-Will
E = Encounter
D = Daily
U = Utility
T = Total
PA = Paragon Attack
PU = Paragin Utility
EU = Epic Utility
ND = Non-damaging
% = Percent of spells that are non-damaging
% - C = Percent of spells that are non-damaging (not counting Cantrips)

L.....C....A....E....D....U....PA...PU...EU...T.....ND....%........% - C
1.....4....2....1....1....0....0....0....0....8.....4.....50.0%....0.0%
2.....4....2....1....1....1....0....0....0....9.....5.....55.6%....11.1%
3.....4....2....2....1....1....0....0....0....10....5.....50.0%....10.0%
4.....4....2....2....1....1....0....0....0....10....5.....50.0%....10.0%
5.....4....2....2....2....1....0....0....0....11....5.....45.5%....9.1%
6.....4....2....2....2....2....0....0....0....12....6.....50.0%....16.7%
7.....4....2....3....2....2....0....0....0....13....6.....46.2%....15.4%
8.....4....2....3....2....2....0....0....0....13....6.....46.2%....15.4%
9.....4....2....3....3....2....0....0....0....14....6.....42.9%....14.3%
10....4....2....3....3....3....0....0....0....15....7.....46.7%....20.0%
11....4....2....3....3....3....1....0....0....16....7.....43.8%....18.8%
12....4....2....3....3....3....1....1....0....17....8.....47.1%....23.5%
13....4....2....3....3....3....1....1....0....17....8.....47.1%....23.5%
14....4....2....3....3....3....1....1....0....17....8.....47.1%....23.5%
15....4....2....3....3....3....1....1....0....17....8.....47.1%....23.5%
16....4....2....3....3....4....1....1....0....18....9.....50.0%....27.8%
17....4....2....3....3....4....1....1....0....18....9.....50.0%....27.8%
18....4....2....3....3....4....1....1....0....18....9.....50.0%....27.8%
19....4....2....3....3....4....1....1....0....18....9.....50.0%....27.8%
20....4....2....3....3....4....2....1....0....19....9.....47.4%....26.3%
21....4....2....3....3....4....2....1....0....19....9.....47.4%....26.3%
22....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....0....20....10....50.0%....30.0%
23....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....0....20....10....50.0%....30.0%
24....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....0....20....10....50.0%....30.0%
25....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....0....20....10....50.0%....30.0%
26....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....1....21....11....52.4%....33.3%
27....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....1....21....11....52.4%....33.3%
28....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....1....21....11....52.4%....33.3%
29....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....1....21....11....52.4%....33.3%
30....4....2....3....3....5....2....1....1....21....11....52.4%....33.3%

 

[Doctor Proctor]

The fighter isn't guaranteed more damage. He EITHER does more damage or gets to force the monsters to make BAD decisions. When the monsters make bad decisions to avoid getting hit, they might live longer, but they will accomplish a lot less in their time on this earth.

That's very true. My DM doesn't like to provoke OA's or go against my marks, at least so far... He treats the Paladin the same way. So, when we're in any sort of tight area, the two Defenders completely control the battlefield. We start taking on all comers and hold them to us.

We go whole encounters without our Ranger or Wizard even getting so much as a scratch. Now, that may not be high DPS, but it's doing something that helps the party out.

Sure, the job has changed a little bit, but that's fine. If you want a high DPS striker melee unit, go with a two-blade Ranger or wait for the Martial Powers book. But as it stands right now, every class now has different roles and does different things.

And as for the Wizard, he's a big help too. Even though we're only at level 2, he already contributes a lot. Icy Terrain can knock a group on their butts and keep them from swarming the Fighter and the Paladin, or he can Flaming Sphere as a sort of secondary line to hold off enemies. When their choice is to take damage by simply standing next to something, but not being able to move past our line without taking OA's, they're really caught between a rock and a hard place. (Or a Flaming Sphere and Heavy Armor as it were...)