Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="gribble" data-source="post: 4873714" data-attributes="member: 12430">Yeah, I saw that a bit too, although I never really played much 3e beyond about 15th level. We had one campaign get up around 23rd, all the rest ended by 15th (one way or another). For me, 4e specialisation kicks in right from 1st level, as evidenced by how incredulous you seem at the rangers stats. In 3e, a 14, 14, 14, 12, 12, 11 character certainly wouldn't be optimised, but he'd still play pretty well. I don't think the same is true of 4e, even at low levels. I also really enjoyed the game, up until about mid paragon. That was about the point that a) fights started getting really grindy; and b) we started noticing the "auto -win" abilities (like bigbys icy grasp) and the fights started getting too easy (though still long and boring). I'm not sure if it was because the game itself changed, or because we went from home brew to WotC (P2, P3) adventures, or maybe a combination of both.I do know that on Tuesday we went back to a home brew adventure, and (other than the poor ranger) it was the most challenging and fun session we've had in a while (though still noticably grindy unfortunately).The Weapon Expertise is definitely significant.You have to understand that it was the first ever 4e character that player made, and he didn't realise at that point just how much 4e rewarded specialists. He assumed that he could make a good, effective, RP focussed generalist character like he could in 3e.I think about half way through Heroic he decided he sucked at melee and changed over to become a bow ranger (bumping Dex instead of Str), then realised he sucked just as bad at that and changed back... that didn't help him much either.Basically the player made some bad choices right at the start, and isn't really an optimiser.And yeah, he was noticably worse at Paragon too, but the gap just seems to be increasing. His skills are a little higher than most of us, and his non-AC defences are all good (though with the way PC defences scale vs monster attack, it isn't significant - not enough to make up for the lack of Robust Defences anyway). But yeah, generally speaking he's maybe a point or two better in skills that are never used and his worst non-AC defence in exchange for being 6 or so points worse at attacking. In 4e, definitely not a good trade.</blockquote>

Verification