Fun with forced movement?

[Someone]

Long story short, I’m planning to create a new character, a mage enchanter and illusionist with lots of forced movement powers and the usual “make the enemy attack his allies” and action denial spells, preferably zones and walls where to push enemies into. I’d like advice on a couple things;

First, general advice on how to build him. It must be human or close enough, mid Heroic tier and preferably just a mage with appropriate multiclassing (warlock or bard, at most) and items. I won’t play a hybrid warden|mage/vampire that dual wields a glaive and a goat as implements.

Second, I can make Hypnotism or Beguiling Strands push/slide enemies 7 squares easily (base 3, plus 2 enchanter, 1 orb expertise and 1 some relatively cheap orb from Emporium that increases forced movement by 1 as property. How can I make the most of that, both by increasing even further and adding other conditions? The only ones I’m aware of are Rushing cleats (which would only apply to Beguiling Strands), Petrified orb superior implement (another +1 to forced movement distance, but no +1 to hit Will and +2 psychic damage from crystal orb, sounds like a “no”) and gauntlets of the ram, which would apply only to Beguiling Strands, and I’d prefer to use instead resplendent gloves. There’s a 6th level wizard encounter utility that can increase forced movement by 2 for 1 round, and paragon feats for bard and fighter that can teleport instead of slide or slow after a forced movement respectively (This last one is brutal against pure melee monsters, but requires a shield, fighter multiclassing and Str investment, which doesn’t sound very appropriate to me)

Any other ideas?

 

[the Jester]

Zones and walls.

One of the (early paragon) pcs imc is an enchanter, and he's extremely frustrating at times. It's less the distance you push or slide someone and more your ability to make that spot terrible to be in (terrain, charm of the defender, suddenly they're flanked, etc).

Focusing on forced movement works very well if you are good at thinking tactically.

 

[Mistwell]

How did your forced-movement Enchanter work out for you? Jester, how did the one in your campaign go? Anyone else play one of these?

 

[Unwise]

I generally find forced movement a little underwhelming, as by itself it does very little. If there is no cliff, tight corridor, fire, knight or something else nasty to push them into them all it really does is use up their movement action as they casually walk back in to their previous position.

Forced movement is also very dependant upon coming in at the right initative. There is very little point pushing enemies into a more advantagous location, if it means moving them away from the defender. However if his/her turn is just after yours, you are all set for a great combination. By the same token, a sorceror will love you if you can bunch up enemies just before they start their turn. Unfortunetly though, mages tend to have terrible initiative.

It is really only when combined with a slow or prone condition that forced movement becomes a game-changer in and of itself.

I am fairly generous with allowing people to push monsters off cliffs or into damaging terrain. If anything I tend to fudge the saving throws to allow unimportant enemes to die quickly. I have a general rule though that non-bloodied elites and solos will always make their saves vs a cliff dive.

The skill that allows you to turn a push into a teleport is pretty viscious. RAW you could push him one square diagnoally up and 6 squares up. Then watch as he falls 35 feet. I saw an article somewhere where a wizards employee suggested giving them a save against stuff like that. Even without the extra damage though, putting them on the other side of chasms, or in a closed jail cell is pretty sweet.

On a side note, I had one game where a PC cast invisibility on a door with hilarious results. It works in interesting ways with teleportation. The Battlemind using Inconstant Location would teleport through it and smack people before ducking back, the warlock teleported people to the wrong side of it and charging enemies ran headlong into it, braining themselves and ending up prone.

 

[Someone]

How did your forced-movement Enchanter work out for you? Jester, how did the one in your campaign go? Anyone else play one of these?

Since I made it for a pbp campaign that's a bit stalled I didn't have the opportunity to fully test it, but the little I did it worked great. Not gamebreaking great, but useful nonetheless. Forced movement is situationally useful, but the situations come often enough that it's hard to get into one where it's useless; or in other words, you need to think how to get the most from your powers from round to round, which is the best aspect of 4e's combat. Speaking in Charop terms, the benefits are difficult to quantify and may seem underwhelming compared to a passive, say, -2 to hit, but it's a powerful effect to have once you're in actual combat. There's a good reason that one of the most iconic 4e's powers is Tide of Iron.

Examples are pushing a solo down a convenient cliff using magic missile tricked out to make it a push 3 (I think the DM thanked me for that, since he used a high level one and it's defenses were too high, threatening to make the combat a boring one), moving enemies out of the way to allow squishies to get into and out of combat without drawing OAs, moving an enemy out of an escape route, gathering enemies for maximizing the effects of a piromancer's spells, forcing enemies to charge instead of using their best attacks, and pushing them into damaging or slowing zones (enchanters have plenty of these too)

 

[Radiating Gnome]

I generally find forced movement a little underwhelming, as by itself it does very little. If there is no cliff, tight corridor, fire, knight or something else nasty to push them into them all it really does is use up their movement action as they casually walk back in to their previous position.

Funny, I'm a big fan of forced movement. It's some of the most interesting, flexible, tactically challenging stuff you can do in 4e combat. Everything else works or doesn't based on dice and stats, etc., but with forced movement you can do things like prevent a monster from attacking (often in combination with knocking it prone or dazing it), free an ally from a monster's grasp, send it into hazardous terrain, anything the terrain allows.

A Daze or Slow effect is pretty much always that -- daze or slow. But forced movement is a veritable swiss army knife. I love it.

-rg

 

[Mistwell]

It seems to me there are three primary 'builds' for forced movement that are effective:

1) forced movement combined with slowed effect;
2) forced movement into harmful areas (terrain or spell areas);
3) forced movement combined with prone effect.

Here is an example of the third type:

Feat: Arcane Implement Proficiency (Heavy Blades)(This allows you to use a glaive, see below)
Feat: Multiclass Fighter (Brawling Warrior) (allows you to take polearm momentum)
Feat: Polearm Momentum (requires 13 Str, and 13 Wis) (prones after a push or slide 2)
Weapon/Implement: Glaive (both a heavy blade and polearm) (I recommend the magic item type that grants proficiency with it, so you can use it as a weapon as well, though that is not required)

You can prone after every push or slide of more than 2 squares that you make with it. Which means, with Beguiling Strands as an Enchanter, you've got a party-friendly range-5 at-will push 5 prone.

Drawbacks:

You lose out on the extra +1 from Orb Expertise, and some nice magic orbs as well.

You'd have to take Versatile Expertise for accuracy.

Multiple ability dependency is an issue. Wisdom 13 isn't unusual, but Str 13 is.

Feat-intensive, which means you will miss out on some defensive feats if you take this early, such as Unarmored Agility.

 

[Radiating Gnome]

[MENTION=2525]Mistwell[/MENTION], that's all true, but I think you don't really get into the fun of forced movement until you see the battlefield. If you're fighting on a open, featureless plane, then yeah, that's about all you can do. But when there starts to be terrain to interact with, and you can find creative ways to work with it -- that's when forced movement's flexibility squeezes out awesomesauce.

Remember, for example, that forced movement ignores difficult terrain, so forcing an enemy over several spaces of rough ground may put them in a position where they are forced to settle for charge attacks to get back into the fight on their turn -- which is often a huge reduction in a creature's DPR. Often large or huge opponents can be forced into situations where it's difficult for them to bring all of their numbers into reach to attack the PCs.

And I've never met a controller who didn't value having someone on the team who could add a few more targets to their areas of effect. Or a defender who didn't value the teammate who can force all more enemies into a tight corner where he can take OAs on more targets.

So, anyway... that's my point. You can plan out a perfect attack combo and invest feats into making sure it works perfectly, but even without it, a single forced movement attack provides an excellent opportunity for creative, interesting combat.

-rg

 

[Storminator]

In our first 4e party, everyone took some forced move power. It took a couple fights to grok the rules, but then we pushed everybody around and completely owned the battlefield. Over time, PCs died and were replaced, or people retrained out of powers, and the whole group pretty much lost forced movement powers. We became noticeably less effective.

It's not sexy, but determining which monster is within arms reach of which PC makes a lot of difference in damage output and survivability.

PS

 

[Someone]

It seems to me there are three primary 'builds' for forced movement that are effective:

1) forced movement combined with slowed effect;
2) forced movement into harmful areas (terrain or spell areas);
3) forced movement combined with prone effect.

Here is an example of the third type:

Feat: Arcane Implement Proficiency (Heavy Blades)(This allows you to use a glaive, see below)
Feat: Multiclass Fighter (Brawling Warrior) (allows you to take polearm momentum)
Feat: Polearm Momentum (requires 13 Str, and 13 Wis) (prones after a push or slide 2)
Weapon/Implement: Glaive (both a heavy blade and polearm) (I recommend the magic item type that grants proficiency with it, so you can use it as a weapon as well, though that is not required)

You can prone after every push or slide of more than 2 squares that you make with it. Which means, with Beguiling Strands as an Enchanter, you've got a party-friendly range-5 at-will push 5 prone.

Drawbacks:

You lose out on the extra +1 from Orb Expertise, and some nice magic orbs as well.

You'd have to take Versatile Expertise for accuracy.

Multiple ability dependency is an issue. Wisdom 13 isn't unusual, but Str 13 is.

Feat-intensive, which means you will miss out on some defensive feats if you take this early, such as Unarmored Agility.

There's a less feat intensive way for Prone; just take World's Serpent Grasp and powers that Immobilize or Slow enemies; the enchantment and Illusion schools have plenty of these, and Slow is a common effect among all classes anyway.