D&D 4E Making the Character I Want to Play in 4e (Long)

[Xanaqui]

OK, so looking at everything released so far and leaning heavily on the pre-release PDF, I thought I'd see if 4e lets me create the character I want to play....

Character concept: A character with strong adventuring skills and movement that whacks things with a greatsword. My half-orc RogueX/FighterX/Barbarian1/Assassin with a Greatsword gets rebranded to a Human Rogue with a greatsword and Fighter Multiclassing Feats (with Half-Orc and Barbarian out, he's just glad male is still an option). To be fair, he started as a 1e Fighter/Assassin with a 2-handed sword so some of this he has seen before (including a little time as an elf Fighter/Thief in 2e, but he was young and experimenting, and doing it just a couple times doesn't mean you are).

I am very impressed that you're still interested in playing a character you played in 3 previous editions. I can only think of a handful of characters (out of dozens) that I bothered to translate between even adjacent editions.

I am also a little surprised that your PC's weapons defines your character. I've always (as a PC) been opposed that that approach, particuarly for melee weapons (which is why I've never liked Weapon Specialization).

In any case, best of luck. I suspect that the rules bending (if it is bending at all) that you want to do (to get your favorite weapon to work with the rest of your build) won't be objectional to many GMs.

 

[Kzach]

Just a note on the weapon thing.

In 4e, as I understand it, proficiency in a weapon gives a bonus whilst non-proficiency does not give a penalty. The bonus that proficiency gives is dependant on the damage capacity of the weapon, ranging from light weapons that give a +3 to hit with proficiency, to heavy weapons that only give a +1 to hit.

So with your above character concept, non-proficiency only means he's missing out on that +1 to hit. So he basically swings the thing wildly, but effectively. Some training will give him what he needs to swing it with skill.

 

[Shazman]

OK, so looking at everything released so far and leaning heavily on the pre-release PDF, I thought I'd see if 4e lets me create the character I want to play....

(Rest of quote deleted by admin. Please don't overquote!)

If your point is that meaningful customization is history with the advent of 4E, and the cookie cutter builds will be the norm, I agree with you. Maybe Pathfinder RPG will be more to your liking.

 

[Grimstaff]

Can I make a good character that isn't what I want to play? Yeah, there is stuff that some people are going to enjoy like the aforementioned Armoredswordandshieldbob Fireballpants or cookie-cutter, halfling rogue which has a lot of ways to be a better, cookie-cutter, halfling rogue. Really, you could even make a cookie-cutter, halfling rogue that takes multiclass fighter feats to use with a shortsword or maybe rapier and probably end up with a pretty nice cookie-cutter, halfling rogue with multiclass fighter feats.

Can I make a good character that I want to play? Hard to say. Figuring four, eight-hour, weekly sessions a month, I can't see being consistently overshadowed, encounter after encounter, session after session, by people that play cookie-cutter builds straight from the PHB because I wanted to do something like use a different weapon. If the three hypothetical feats left (or other things in the PHB that haven't been released yet) get the greatsword up to speed and the character ends up being as effective on average as a cokie-cutter Rogue or cookie-cutter Fighter, then yes - and I'd even pay $14.95 a month to play those sessions online.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't the obvious choice be to go with the half-orc racial stats from the Monster Manual (or Necro's Advanced Players Guide) and play a Fighter with some rogue multiclass abilities?

It seems like you're mostly concerned with the fighting ability of this character, so I'm not sure why you would want to go with Rogue as the base class...

 

[Grimstaff]

If your point is that meaningful customization is history with the advent of 4E, and the cookie cutter builds will be the norm, I agree with you. Maybe Pathfinder RPG will be more to your liking.

Maybe he wouldn't be posting in the 4E boards if he wanted to play Pathfinder?

Maybe the Paizo boards would be more to your liking?

 

[tsadkiel]

Maybe I'm missing something here, but wouldn't the obvious choice be to go with the half-orc racial stats from the Monster Manual (or Necro's Advanced Players Guide) and play a Fighter with some rogue multiclass abilities?

It seems like you're mostly concerned with the fighting ability of this character, so I'm not sure why you would want to go with Rogue as the base class...

For that matter, the Advanced Player's Guide will have a Barbarian class.

 

[Kzach]

If your point is that meaningful customization is history with the advent of 4E, and the cookie cutter builds will be the norm, I agree with you. Maybe Pathfinder RPG will be more to your liking.

If your point is that quoting a massive body of text in your post is meant to be annoying then I agree with you. Maybe Lorem Ipsum will be more to your liking.

 

[Wisdom Penalty]

If your point is that quoting a massive body of text in your post is meant to be annoying then I agree with you.

*snap*

 

[muffin_of_chaos]

Sneak Attack with the highest-base-damage weapon damage for medium-sized creatures seems a bit hard to swallow.
With Brutal Scoundrel (and Backstabber, if you have an extra feat), you'd start out doing 2d6+2d8+6 (10-34) at a theoretical +6 on any given base melee sneak attack.
With a Tortuous Strike sneak attack, that's 4d6+2d8+8 (14-48).

If you have initiative, use an Action Point and the fan-created power Easy Target, and hit with your daily and then encounter, given only natural bonuses, you do a total of 10d6+4d8+14 (28-106), average 67 at first level, in one round.

Which I dunno, might be fair enough for using a Daily and then Encounter power. But I think there's a reason they don't want Rogue weapons to get too high base-damage-wise.

 

[PeterWeller]

I'm also thinking Fighter/Rogue would work better than Rogue/Fighter. Your concept sounds like and unholy bad ass who can also sneak around and put a knife in a back when necessary.