Grognard's First Take On 4e

[Imaro]

That might be a problem if the standard encounter was "party vs one standard monster" but the only time the PCs are facing one single monster is against a Solo. Solos have the hitpoints to easily stand up to 5 dailies from the PCs which then results in a Solo monster that quickly reaches Bloodied and I'm willing to bet most Solo monsters get TOUGHER when they hit their Bloodied state.

I feel like you are still missing the point...it actually is just as good with more than one monster. Let's say you have monster A, B, C, D all 8 "hit" monsters. Now here's two examples of combat....

1st combat PC's (5) use at will powers (1 hit) first....so even if they gang up on one monster it still isn't enough "hits" to take him out of the fight. 5*1=5. This means on the monsters turn they now have 4 total attacks against the players.
Monster A (3/8 hits) attks
Monster B, C, & D(8/8 hits) attks
Total attks for monster on their turn is 4


2nd combat PC's use encounter powers (2 hits) first...so now if they gang up on a monster they can actually kill one this round and bring another down so that it has 6 out of 8 hits left. 5*2=10. This means the next round they only have to worry about 3 attacks instead of 4 on the next round they will suffer the 3 attacks again unless they burn the daily.
Monster A (0/8 hits) no attk
Monster B (6/8 hits) attk
Monster C & D (8/8 hits) attk
Total attks for monster on their turn is 3

3rd combat PC's use daily powers (3 hits) first...so now if they gang up on monsters they will kill one and bring a second down to 1 out of 8 hits left. 5*3=15 . Thhis means in then next round they will deal with 3 attacks and the following round only 2 attacks (regardless if they use encounter or daily attacks) from the monsters.
Monster A (0/8 hits) no attk
Monster B (1/8 hits) attk
Monster C & D (8/8 hits) attk
Total attks for monster on their turn is 3

So here we see that you can lessen attrition of your party's hit points (and thus chance of dying) by opening with the daily then the encounter (which kills Monster B & C) then using the daily once there is only one monster to worry about.

Doing it in reverse means your party will take more damage from attacks by the monsters and thus there ius a greater chance you can be knocked unconscious or die before using the encounter or daily powers.

 

[ExploderWizard]

But... unless you were a class who had the ability to do everything awesomely at once, you already had a "role" that defined what your class would function most optimally doing.

Your two-hand fighter with Power Attack was already charging low AC targets to blow them away with explosive damage. The rogue was already avoiding heavy hitters and diving into flanks to gain his sneak attack. The Wizard and Cleric are using their defined spell list to do whatever they are supposed to do.

Could you perhaps elaborate how the situation is any different now? About the only possible argument I can see is the concept that, because of role, class design is a little more streamlined, but even this argument is inherently faulty because every class has ALWAYS had some degree of streamlining about what they could and couldn't do. Any character not built as a jack of all trades (which tended to suck anyway, really) was FURTHER specialized.

So yeah. Hash this out with me.

Of course classes have always been limited by thier selection of abilities, the addition of a role just adds more.

I agree that jack of all trades types in a class based game never work out very well.

A fighter could be a swashbucker with a high DEX, a lighter weapon and a selection of feats that supported this concept and didn't have to be a heavy tank. A rogue could be a second story type of lockpicking wizard who only engaged in combat as a last resort. If by streamlining you meant pigeonholing a character concept into the most efficient combat model possible then I guess 4E did a pretty thorough job.

 

[Victim]

I'm not sure the party is always going to have the information to make opening with big powers a good call. It makes you really vulnerable to bait. If you don't necessarily know which monsters in a fight are the most dangerous or toughest, then you have to pay for that information as the encounter progresses.

 

[AllisterH]

I feel like you are still missing the point...it actually is just as good with more than one monster. Let's say you have monster A, B, C, D all 8 "hit" monsters. Now here's two examples of combat....

1st combat PC's (5) use at will powers (1 hit) first....so even if they gang up on one monster it still isn't enough "hits" to take him out of the fight. 5*1=5. This means on the monsters turn they now have 4 total attacks against the players.
Monster A (3/8 hits) attks
Monster B, C, & D(8/8 hits) attks
Total attks for monster on their turn is 4


2nd combat PC's use encounter powers (2 hits) first...so now if they gang up on a monster they can actually kill one this round and bring another down so that it has 6 out of 8 hits left. 5*2=10. This means the next round they only have to worry about 3 attacks instead of 4 on the next round they will suffer the 3 attacks again unless they burn the daily.
Monster A (0/8 hits) no attk
Monster B (6/8 hits) attk
Monster C & D (8/8 hits) attk
Total attks for monster on their turn is 3

3rd combat PC's use daily powers (3 hits) first...so now if they gang up on monsters they will kill one and bring a second down to 1 out of 8 hits left. 5*3=15 . Thhis means in then next round they will deal with 3 attacks and the following round only 2 attacks (regardless if they use encounter or daily attacks) from the monsters.
Monster A (0/8 hits) no attk
Monster B (1/8 hits) attk
Monster C & D (8/8 hits) attk
Total attks for monster on their turn is 3

So here we see that you can lessen attrition of your party's hit points (and thus chance of dying) by opening with the daily then the encounter (which kills Monster B & C) then using the daily once there is only one monster to worry about.

Doing it in reverse means your party will take more damage from attacks by the monsters and thus there ius a greater chance you can be knocked unconscious or die before using the encounter or daily powers.

Ah, I see what you're doing.

Wouldn't be advisable in my opinion since the reverse ALSO happens to be true. If the situation is such that the PCs can gang up on one standard monster, the reverse also happens to be true

 

[Blackeagle]

A fighter could be a swashbucker with a high DEX, a lighter weapon and a selection of feats that supported this concept and didn't have to be a heavy tank.

I never really felt that 3e supported the swashbuckling type of fighter very well with just feats. You really need a separate class (Swashbuckler, or the AE Unfettered) to do it right. I think 4e is going to do a much better job supporting this out of the box. In 4e, the light-armor fighter is on a much more even playing field with the heavy armor fighter, since heavy armor fighters don't get to add their dex to AC. The rapier no longer has a smaller damage die than the longsword. Plus if you want to add any of the rogues cool mobility oriented powers, just throw in a few multiclass feats.

A rogue could be a second story type of lockpicking wizard who only engaged in combat as a last resort.

Seems like you could do pretty much the same thing in 4e, save that the rouge will at least be competent at the last resort.

If by streamlining you meant pigeonholing a character concept into the most efficient combat model possible then I guess 4E did a pretty thorough job.

From what we've seen so far, I think it does a good job in enabling almost any character concept to be realized without compromising it's combat ability too much. What's wrong with that?

 

[fnwc]

I never really felt that 3e supported the swashbuckling type of fighter very well with just feats. You really need a separate class (Swashbuckler, or the AE Unfettered) to do it right.

Actually, in 3E the 'light fighter' generally gets outclassed by all 'heavy fighters' pretty quickly, with only a few exceptions (Dervish, Chain Tripper).

 

[SSquirrel]

Yep, that is a very good analogy. It also means the utensil company has turned their backs on soup lovers and has fired them as customers. Well, there are other companies that still make spoons and still like soup.

But if the soup in question was always Campbell's Chunky Soup "The soup that eats like a meal", they've always shown people eating it just fine with forks. So I guess it depends which soup you're talking about. Me, I love me some Chunky and my 4E fork works just fine

 

[Blackeagle]

Actually, in 3E the 'light fighter' generally gets outclassed by all 'heavy fighters' pretty quickly, with only a few exceptions (Dervish, Chain Tripper).

I think the Unfettered does a pretty good job standing up to the heavies, even in comparison to the Warmain, which is the heavy fighter extraordinaire.

 

[Cheesepie]

I think the major point of contention is the definition of tactics in this case. There is old school fantasy combat tactics and the newer "role" based tactics. In both cases good teamwork is beneficial. The "role" version forces teamwork in a very specific manner. Each role has a defined subset of tasks that must be performed in order to do the very best both mathematically and tactically. I can see this as exciting for tabletop skirmishing but getting old in an extended campaign. Classes are already limiting by themselves without adding a the role layer to that.

What exactly is "old school fantasy combat tactics" and how does 4E no longer qualify as this? Other than its non-old-school-ness, of course!

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

You do realize don't you that you've just created the perfect analogy for the people complaining that 4e won't let them run the kinds of games they like? If the fork won't ever let you consume soup, then it's all the more reason to ditch the fork.

It's very possible that 4e won't work for what he used to use 3e for.

It is a good analogy like that. If there is something in 4E missing that you want from your game, you just won't get it, regardless of how much I or anyone else might love 4E and believe it to be the best things since sliced bread!

Off course what's the soup standing for?
"Role-playing intensive storytelling"?
or at the other side of spectrum
"Bloated mess of unbalanced rules favoring spellcasters over anyone else"?
or something more reasonable like
"A game featuring the Great Wheel Cosmology build around the 9 alignments, and a lot of the metaphysical/magical effects based around that"?

See, it still doesn't help.