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messy's 4e newbie questions thread
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<blockquote data-quote="AbdulAlhazred" data-source="post: 6225035" data-attributes="member: 82106"><p>56 - PCs are 'glass cannons' compared with monsters. It doesn't work well at all. First of all the PCs are COMPLEX and this just burdens the DM with a lot of nonsense that they'll never gain anything from. Secondly PCs are front-loaded with damage dealing and back-loaded with hit points. The balance is designed so that monsters come out blasting with their encounter powers, knock the PCs on their low hitpoint butts, the PCs rally, kick in their resources and gain the upper hand, then finish off the monsters. If you face PCs against PCs basically the guy who gets the initiative wins. PC-type NPCs have no reason to hold back, if they go first there will be a blaze of Daily fire and the party will be TPK, if it goes the other way the PCs will be forced to do likewise and the balance of daily resource use is broken. You will find that monsters are FAR better adapted to be opponents than PCs are. PC rules are designed to produce good PCs with reasonable power levels, but the 4e NPC rules are really just "here are the guidelines for what an Nth level combat opponent can do, roughly". You're very free with 4e monsters to create whatever you like really, and not bound by the narrow strictures of class etc. Its a much more open system IMHO. You can of course still build a monster that is an "Elf Paladin" if you wish, but you're free to build it in a way that makes it a worthy opponent and an interesting challenge in the specific context vs trying to force the PC governing rules that have a different agenda into the round hole of an NPC challenge. </p><p></p><p>57 - They are both arm slot items, so the answer is generally no. I'd note that this means in practice that shields are pretty useless. This is not due to any inherent need for shields to be so, but in practice the enchantments on things like bracers are just much better. You can of course always create better shields if you want... The Spiked Shield is a bit of an exception since you can gain the benefits of weapon enchantments, plus a shield benefit, which makes it an attractive option for some builds.</p><p></p><p>58 - Well, there are various builds that at Epic are pretty unconcerned with being damaged AT ALL, but in general no. "Sneak Attack" isn't really a specific rules category in 4e anyway. Rogues for instance can get bonus damage if they attack with combat advantage, there's no specific 'sneaking' involved, though attacking from a hidden position is a common way to get CA that most rogues are well-equipped to undertake. I don't know how you would even write an "immune to sneak attack" power, 4e simply lacks the language to express this concept in rules terms. Critical Hit negation is of course theoretically possible, but the honest truth is it is of marginal utility, especially at higher levels. Most higher level monsters have modest raw damage output and their damage expressions are written such that a crit doesn't make a huge difference. For example a standard Fire Giant is level 18 and does 2d12+13 damage. The average is going to be 25, the max 37, and the min 15. The difference between 25 and 37, 12 damage, at level 18 is trivial. A level 18 fighter has almost 200 hit points. He'd be wasting his time with an 'anti-CR' power or item. There are of course a very few monsters with nasty crits, but they tend to be in the context of low-level play where you are unlikely to see an anti-CR power/item.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="AbdulAlhazred, post: 6225035, member: 82106"] 56 - PCs are 'glass cannons' compared with monsters. It doesn't work well at all. First of all the PCs are COMPLEX and this just burdens the DM with a lot of nonsense that they'll never gain anything from. Secondly PCs are front-loaded with damage dealing and back-loaded with hit points. The balance is designed so that monsters come out blasting with their encounter powers, knock the PCs on their low hitpoint butts, the PCs rally, kick in their resources and gain the upper hand, then finish off the monsters. If you face PCs against PCs basically the guy who gets the initiative wins. PC-type NPCs have no reason to hold back, if they go first there will be a blaze of Daily fire and the party will be TPK, if it goes the other way the PCs will be forced to do likewise and the balance of daily resource use is broken. You will find that monsters are FAR better adapted to be opponents than PCs are. PC rules are designed to produce good PCs with reasonable power levels, but the 4e NPC rules are really just "here are the guidelines for what an Nth level combat opponent can do, roughly". You're very free with 4e monsters to create whatever you like really, and not bound by the narrow strictures of class etc. Its a much more open system IMHO. You can of course still build a monster that is an "Elf Paladin" if you wish, but you're free to build it in a way that makes it a worthy opponent and an interesting challenge in the specific context vs trying to force the PC governing rules that have a different agenda into the round hole of an NPC challenge. 57 - They are both arm slot items, so the answer is generally no. I'd note that this means in practice that shields are pretty useless. This is not due to any inherent need for shields to be so, but in practice the enchantments on things like bracers are just much better. You can of course always create better shields if you want... The Spiked Shield is a bit of an exception since you can gain the benefits of weapon enchantments, plus a shield benefit, which makes it an attractive option for some builds. 58 - Well, there are various builds that at Epic are pretty unconcerned with being damaged AT ALL, but in general no. "Sneak Attack" isn't really a specific rules category in 4e anyway. Rogues for instance can get bonus damage if they attack with combat advantage, there's no specific 'sneaking' involved, though attacking from a hidden position is a common way to get CA that most rogues are well-equipped to undertake. I don't know how you would even write an "immune to sneak attack" power, 4e simply lacks the language to express this concept in rules terms. Critical Hit negation is of course theoretically possible, but the honest truth is it is of marginal utility, especially at higher levels. Most higher level monsters have modest raw damage output and their damage expressions are written such that a crit doesn't make a huge difference. For example a standard Fire Giant is level 18 and does 2d12+13 damage. The average is going to be 25, the max 37, and the min 15. The difference between 25 and 37, 12 damage, at level 18 is trivial. A level 18 fighter has almost 200 hit points. He'd be wasting his time with an 'anti-CR' power or item. There are of course a very few monsters with nasty crits, but they tend to be in the context of low-level play where you are unlikely to see an anti-CR power/item. [/QUOTE]
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