I think we're done with 4E

[Plane Sailing]

Your examples are interesting, but are arguably super-optimised and using additional books and suggestions beyond the PHB. If I strip those out...

Lets use a dragonborn glaive fighter.

+5 strength bonus on level 11
+3 magic weapon
+2 weapon focus
(+6 power attack)

Standard array gives Str 16+2 from race = 18. Ability bumps at 4th, 8th and 11th gives 21 Str.

So a Standard PHB dragonborn fighter would expect to get +10, with +16 if he power attacks. Often people won't power attack since every point 'to hit' counts, and if he doesn't power attack with his glaive he is doing an average of 15 damage a round including his weapon.

Take a wizard (11th level) which is a controller and is specialized on thunderwave.

+6 intelligence
+3 wand
+2 raging storm (remembering this wants Con and Dex 13+ and since thundering blast wizards have an incentive to maximise Wis, that fights with their desire to up Dex too, so this isn't necessarily a given here)

So 1d6+11 to everyone in blast you hit. Average 14.5 each.

the [strikethrough]bugbear[/strikethrough] brutal scoundrel rogue (11th level) gets combat advantage every round cause of flanked, dazed, stunned, prone enemies...

+5 dexterity
+3 weapon
+3 brutal scoundrel
+2 weapon focus
+1 two-weapon fighting
(+4 power attack)

Bugbear isn't one of the standard races, so we can remove his oversized weapon and extra strength bonus. Probably go for a halfling rogue as they are the most typical ones. He can have a standard +3 weapon at 11th level (I don't see subtle weapon in PHB - another AV item?). Standard array gives Dex 16+2 from race = 18 and str 14. Ability bumps at 4th, 8th and 11th gives 21 Dex and 17 Str. This puts him at 1d4+11 on a normal hit, and 1d4+14+3d8 on a sneak attack hit (+4 if using power attack, but again rarely see it taken and used because of the desire to, above all, get a hit in). Ave 29 damage on a hit but hey, he is a striker.

So this (slightly less optimised, PHB only) three party group would have a likely average damage per round each (assuming CA always available) of (15 + 14.5 + 29) /3 ~= 20 each.

Which isn't far off Felon's original assertion, considering that this is when they hit - and hit rate might be about 50% or so.

Cheers

 

[Jack99]

Which isn't far off Felon's original assertion, considering that this is when they hit - and hit rate might be about 50% or so.

Cheers

Felon said that hits of 20+ damage with anything but a daily power are extremely rare. You are talking about average damage per round. How is that the same? Am I missing something?

 

[Plane Sailing]

Felon said that hits of 20+ damage with anything but a daily power are extremely rare. You are talking about average damage per round. How is that the same? Am I missing something?

Sorry, maybe I misread him. I thought he was saying that on average the party damage output was lucky to exceed 20 damage per person per round.

Cheers

 

[Jack99]

Sorry, maybe I misread him. I thought he was saying that on average the party damage output was lucky to exceed 20 damage per person per round.

Cheers

If he did, then I am pretty embarrassed.

EDIT: Nope, it seems that I am right. This was the quote that brought me into the argument.

Some elaboration is in order. In 4e, you're lucky to see a non-daily attack do 20 points of damage, even at paragon levels. OTOH, hit points often top 100, even at heroic levels. Add into that the rather high whiff factor in 4e, and you've got a recipe for grinding, not brisk three-round battles.

 

[Shadowsong666]

oh sorry, the d6 wasn't ment to be there as we don't use oversized weapons in our game. Should be d4.

I am talking about one of our groups that gets played.

1 dragonborn fighter /mc cleric (Tempus)
1 shifter cleric /mc warlord (Tempus)
1 dragonborn paladin /mc warlord (Tempus)
1 bugbear rogue /mc warlord
1 Eladrin wizard /mc cleric (Sehanine)

dont have all the stats in my head - but we are a bit - well - optimized? Its nice to roleplay and its a big part in our game (we try to solve encounters with words or intimidation from time to time, but somehow monsters quite dont react the way we want them to ^^).

 

[Jack99]

OK, it seems my statement about characters being lucky to do 20 pts of damage bears some qualfiication.

I'm referring collectively to the damage output from the parade of characters I've seen within the half-dozen 4e parties that I've played in, ranging from levels 1-12, of which only a few have been tricked-out rangers and rogues (and that fighter doing +26 damage per hit is conspicuously absent altogether). If encounters were built using 3e's design of a 1-monster/4-players ratio, I could see only focusing on characters whose role it is to close down opponents and just not counting the healers and buffers and mezzers and meat shields.

But 4e's design is 1-monster/1-player, with all classes designed to contribute damage. Now you ought to count everybody, not just the total badarses. And yeah, some of those characters roll single digits on damage with rather alarming frequency.

As to the warlock getting his 20 points of damage from his encounter power, I'm thinking he's "lucky" to get it because A) it's an encounter power that might be discarded on an all-too-likely miss, and B) that curse damage isn't a given, as I find that in practice it's not all that easy for a ranged attacker to get the enemy he wants to attack closer to him than any other enemy (of course, you can just shoot at the nearest target of opportunity to get the damage bonus, but that's often just playing into the enemy's hands).

Okay, seemed I missed this post of yours. Obviously, we can agree that not all characters do equal damage, and that strikers do the most. However, I do not think it's quite as bad as you say. Also, while strikers do a lot of damage to one target, wizards do a bit less, but usually hits two or more targets per spell, causing them to deal more damage on average. Certainly way more than 20 per round, all things considered.

So, on one hand we have the strikers (rogue, warlock and ranger) who do more, with the fighter just behind, and the wizard who does more, not per hit, but per round, via his aoe spells.

That leaves the paladin, cleric and warlord who do lesser damage. So, obviously your party composition will affect the length of your combats. If your party has a paladin defender, or if it has more than one leader, the damage per round will go down.

Please notice that I am not arguing if 4e has a problem or not. My group hasn't noticed any issues yet, but since a lot of groups seem to have some sort of issue, there must be one. I do however not agree with the numbers presented, in your first post. Your second post (the one quoted above) presents some issues your group has with the game (like the warlock not being able to use his curse) which again doesn't seem to be an issue with my group. Maybe your DM makes his encounters in small spaces, where mobility is non-existent. Maybe the guy playing the warlock doesn't "see" the possibilities he has for movement. I do not know. I just know that the warlocks in my campaigns haven't had that issue yet.

 

[Mathew_Freeman]

Also, I've either read or thought up (probably read) this one: anybody but the PCs that are Bloodied are also at -X to all of their Defense scores (-2 has always seemed to be the magic number). If you want the grit to hit the PCs, do the same for them, too.

Makes Bloodied more fun, and also more tactically sound for a good cue as to when to start laying on the Dailies and Encounter abilities that might miss a high Defense critter.

Making monsters take a -2 to defenses when they hit blooded might be a really good idea, particularly if the players are finding it hard to finish a combat.

I had a group of hobgoblin soldiers last night in KotS and the Barbarian was only hitting them about 1/4 of the time. Admittedly he was rolling poorly, but several players expressed disappointment at how hard the fight was.

 

[Plane Sailing]

I am talking about one of our groups that gets played.

1 dragonborn fighter /mc cleric (Tempus)
1 shifter cleric /mc warlord (Tempus)
1 dragonborn paladin /mc warlord (Tempus)
1 bugbear rogue /mc warlord
1 Eladrin wizard /mc cleric (Sehanine)

dont have all the stats in my head - but we are a bit - well - optimized?

Sure looks like it!

I wasn't taking issue with your calculations at all, BTW - just modifying them to give a possibly more baseline version.

It is interesting to see everyone multiclassed with leader classes (even the cleric!). How is that working out in practice? Are the PCs taking the encounter/utility/daily power swap feats (or is it that at 11th level they all took the paragon multiclass option? I've heard people mention that paragon multiclassing seemed less interesting than the paragon paths, but you're guys all seem to be making a go of it)

Cheers

 

[Shadowsong666]

Sure looks like it!

I wasn't taking issue with your calculations at all, BTW - just modifying them to give a possibly more baseline version.

It is interesting to see everyone multiclassed with leader classes (even the cleric!). How is that working out in practice? Are the PCs taking the encounter/utility/daily power swap feats (or is it that at 11th level they all took the paragon multiclass option? I've heard people mention that paragon multiclassing seemed less interesting than the paragon paths, but you're guys all seem to be making a go of it)

Cheers

basically the first feat for the skill and daily power and one or two feats (depends on the player imho but no one went full MC or took a paragon path out of class) for utility or encounter power (circles, heals).
It goes quite good actually because we don't get into trouble if our healers can't act (stunned, out of combat) because of the extra healing and abilities we have ready.

 

[WizarDru]

I find it interesting that people are describing 'the grind' with respect to 4e. My personal experience (which has only included 4e from 1st to 3rd level) runs exactly counter to that idea, since one of my biggst problems with 3e over the last 8 years is 'the grind'. In 3e, combats (particularly after 11th level) feel like they're decided by the third round. I don't doubt this can occur in 4e, as well...I just don't see it as a edition-specific problem. Over the last few years, I adapted a 'I'm declaring combat has ended' policy towards combats that clearly were going to waste our limited gaming time on a rote exercise.

People talking about combats being much longer in 4e also runs counter to my experience, so far....but people also are using two different metrics for combat length. There's no question that, in terms of rounds, 4e combat takes longer. But in terms of actual real time, 3e combats come off as being much quicker, at least for my group. And more importantly, combat is much more of an equal-opportunity affair. Higher-level combats, in particular, would feature battles in which some characters simply didn't get to do much of interest. In some combats, certain characters were just irrelevant or merely window-dressing while the powerhouses brought their abilities to bear. 4e hasn't provided us with that feel.

And one thing that I'm looking forward to is NOT having to reference the books. Or a website. Or Excel. We've been playing 3e for 8 years...and we STILL have to reference certain play-mechanics to make sure we do them correctly, such as grappling, dispelling, turning and so forth. For my group, 3e has provided us with years of gaming entertainment...but we're ready to move on. If 4e suddenly proves to be a disappointment (which after 6 sessions, it hasn't so far), then we'll shift laterally back to 3e or to True d20.

I certainly don't fault anyone for tiring of any game system and moving to another...or for staying with one that's worked for a long time. Each group should make the choice that's best for them.