Heroic Feats: where are the "gimmes"?

[Vayden]

Seconded on this. The PCs in my campaign have already run into linguistic troubles more than once - can't read the writing in the dwarven ruins (they solved that one with a ritual), can't impersonate a goblin in the goblin-infested castle (yes, they have a way to look like one, but they can't say anything, which limits the usefulness), can't spy on the orcs in the advancing horde. I've been pretty generous about letting all the various creatures know Common, but that doesn't help when you're trying to understand what they're saying among themselves.

Do not underestimate the power of Linguist in a campaign that involves anything beyond combat.

I know, very frustrating. I would totally have take Linguist, except I find that I do have some tiny, frail simulationist tendencies in me, and learning 3 languages while in the middle of a dungeon-crawl is over my own "suspension of disbelief" line. Once we get a couple weeks down-time I'll probably pick it up.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Giving up Dimension Door, Disguise Self, Dispel Magic, Invisibility, Levitate, and/or Wall of Fog is a pretty hefty price to pay for one additional healing per encounter that uses up a Healing Surge anyway.

Pretty much all per-encounter healing at heroic levels use up healing surges.

And from my experience so far (Kobold Hall and first 2/3 of KotS) I'd rather have more per-encounter healing than any of those daily powers, except perhaps Dimension Door. We run through our party's healing reservoir fairly rapidly. Things might change by the time I'm 8th level, of course.

 

[Nifft]

I'd rather have more per-encounter healing than any of those daily powers, except perhaps Dimension Door. We run through our party's healing reservoir fairly rapidly.

Yep, same here. I'm thinking of the same Utility swap.

Quite a shame there are no 6th level Encounter Utility powers on the current Wizard's list.

Cheers, -- N

 

[KarinsDad]

And from my experience so far (Kobold Hall and first 2/3 of KotS) I'd rather have more per-encounter healing than any of those daily powers, except perhaps Dimension Door. We run through our party's healing reservoir fairly rapidly. Things might change by the time I'm 8th level, of course.

Invisibility is virtually total protection (except for area attacks) unless the opponent knows where the target is located. Compared to a single heal, that's pretty huge. Even bigger than Dimension Door. There are boatloads of heals in the game system. Not too many "Nah nah, you can't get me" spells.

Dispel Magic will probably be big at higher levels when monsters do zones.

Disguise Self is quite sweet out of combat. In a combat only game, it's not useful, but in a heavy roleplaying one (combined with Linguistics), it's extremely nice.

Levitate is auto-protection versus most melee only attackers.

Wall of Fog, not that great.

Granted, all of these are once per day.


Heals are nice, but there are just so many darn ways to get them. Plus, a good team needs them less often as their abilities start to gel together. If the enemies are dead, they cannot attack the PCs (as a general rule) and there is less need for healing. Our group rarely runs out of healing surges in combat (it does happen sometimes in real big battles), we tend to run out of them after 5 or so encounters (we have a max of 11 heals for 5 PCs at level 4) due to the healing surge limitation. One extra healing surge per encounter is not that big of a deal (especially Bastion since Wizards tend to have low Cha, Second Wind is generally as powerful), at least for our group.

 

[frankthedm]

I'm beginning to wonder if Toughness is too good...every one of my players has it, and when they survive a blow with 1-5 HP, they just grin and say "Who's tough? I'm tough!"

Given that character get their HP depleted much more gradually than 3E, noticing the difference between having toughness and not having it is really easy. While some monsters do have mega-damage capabilities, drakes & death jumps, I'm looking at you, most foes can't take off 1/2 you HP in a single round like a Full round attack of a 3E two handed weapon wielder. Now because toughness also adds to 1.25 HP to each healing surge, that might be approaching the too good range.

 

[rkanodia]

Given that character get their HP depleted much more gradually than 3E, noticing the difference between having toughness and not having it is really easy. While some monsters do have mega-damage capabilities, drakes & death jumps, I'm looking at you, most foes can't take off 1/2 you HP in a single round like a Full round attack of a 3E two handed weapon wielder. Now because toughness also adds to 1.25 HP to each healing surge, that might be approaching the too good range.

In the game I'm playing in, we've reached 3rd level. Every PC (total of 7 players, though we have about 5 on any given day) has Toughness.

 

[Ginnel]

Only 1 character out of 6 has toughness,

As a Fighter I intend to take

1st Arcane Initiate (for the skill training more than anything, might change depending on what the swordmage multiclass feat is)
2nd Ritual Casting
4th Jack of All Trades
6th Quick Draw
8th Enlarged Dragonbreath/Alchemy if its out by then
10th Enlarged Dragonbreath or Alchemy depending on which taken before.
11th Armor Mastery Scale
12th Fleet of Foot
14th Iron Will

and more will surely follow, this list may change with martial power, but these feats are more for a concept of trying to be prepared for anything rather than being uber effective in any one area.

 

[KarinsDad]

Given that character get their HP depleted much more gradually than 3E, noticing the difference between having toughness and not having it is really easy. While some monsters do have mega-damage capabilities, drakes & death jumps, I'm looking at you, most foes can't take off 1/2 you HP in a single round like a Full round attack of a 3E two handed weapon wielder. Now because toughness also adds to 1.25 HP to each healing surge, that might be approaching the too good range.

I don't see it. It's nice (2 out of 5 of our PCs have it, but one is a Ranger who got it as a class ability and the other is the Wizard), but not overwhelming.

At heroic level, it might require an extra hit (or extra critical) to knock out or bloody the PC in any given encounter. Maybe. Or maybe not.

The +1 HP to each healing surge is not that big of a deal overall. I don't even consider it +1.25 for Wizards because they get 4 hit points per level. So, it is always the same +1 healing surge boost at each level (for heroic PCs), it never increases by 2 (unless the Wizard boosts his CON sufficiently).

Compare this to Weapon Focus that does 1 more point of damage every time it hits. It's easy for a Fighter to hit more than 5 times per encounter which makes Weapon Focus mathematically more useful offensively than Toughness is defensively. A dead foe cannot counterattack. The extra points of damage from multiple hits which take foes out quicker is generally more useful than some extra hit points that rarely get used (they only get used on rare circumstances where the PC would not have been bloodied, or would not have been unconscious).

 

[Mengu]

Honestly, there have been more times I wished I had Durable, rather than Toughness. For a Rogue or Two-Weapon Ranger, it's way too easy to get slapped around a couple times in one encounter, and suddenly, you're afraid to get in the thick of things and play your role because you are running low on healing surges, and don't want to be the reason for the party to have to rest after two or three encounters, before people have even broken out the dailies.

Toughness is good, but Durable lets you play a bit more bravely, and take greater risks for greater gain. Of course nothing says you can't have both.

For any character that's sitting at 4*n - 1 (where n is an integer) hit points at heroic level, Toughness is quite tempting. After a level, you can always retrain it for something else.