D&D 4E My Big 4e Hurdle: Well-Rounded vs Lopsided

[Darrius Adler]

Most of what I got from the change in the way stats are used is that with Point Buy being the standard for determining stats, you are not going to get the shaft. To be decently effective you spent a lot of points in your Prime stat and then looked to the other important ones and prayed you had enough points not to take a penalty in a stat that a save was based on. Almost every point buy wizard I have seen has an 8 Str and an 8 Cha to try and make sure that Dex, Con, Int and Wis are ok, and Wis was usually just a 10. With the new setup you don't have to worry so much about gimping your Saves/Defenses when going for a concept.

 

[arscott]

The fact that intelligence went away as a major rogue ability is mostly a function of the collapsed skill list. Most of the cool int-based things that a rogue could do previously have been assigned to different ability scores as part of the collapsing process. And since Int no longer affects skill points gained, it only makes sense that a 'clever' bard would focus on charisma instead.

 

[catsclaw]

Except there is absolutely *no* evidence to back up this assumption. Sure we haven't seen a good amount of material, but we have seen quite a bit. And none of it suggests that any of the classes are using more than 3 ability scores, and some can get by with 2.

Which I believe was the original point. Wasn't it Monte Cook who said, "Three shall be the number thou shalt minmax, and the number of the minmaxing shall be three. Four shalt thou not minmax, neither minmax thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out." Maybe I'm misremembering.

At any rate, the original contention was that all the choices players got to make in what stats to base things on was going to encourage builds like ...

STR 8
DEX 10
CON 12
INT 8
WIS 8
CHA 26

... which it won't. What it will do is give some flexibility to classes like the paladin, where in 3.5 you need 4 good stats to be effective. Where we disagree is how flexible those three specific stats are; you seem to think they're written in stone (Ranger? Dex, Con, Wis. Next!) while I think the example of the 4e Rogue shows us there's going to be some flexibility (as you now seem to be able to tank Dex for Str).

 

[Wiggimuck]

I definitely understand some of the OP's concerns. However, after watching a rogue in action in my play test I will say that devoting all of your bonus to dexterity over strength can lead to some consequences.

For example, when the rogue was using deft strike, he had a +9 to hit, and was doing 1d4+5 damage. However, his basic attack (the one used for OAs) was a +2, and did 1d4-1. Guess what, my npcs didn't care a lick about the rogue's OAs, and I would freely provoke them. I never did that to the party's fighter

Yeah that's the build I am thinking of going with. Interesting to see how it went. I guess that rogue has no stickiness.

As for the ability scores, Con is still sacred but besides that any stat can become a dump stat, which I like. For role playing purposes one can think of their characters as balanced as long as they have a good stat in one of the three areas. A rogue with a dex of 20 and an int of 8 doesn't need to act like an idiot and can see dex as covering for the low int.

 

[Graf]

It looks like they're trying to limit the number of attributes which are critical to any given build to about 3. That's even more important in 4e, since you're not going to have the usual +2/+4/+6 stat boost items to shore up your weak points.

Surprised more people aren't homing in on this.
Before you had both Stat boosting items and buffs (which could -easily- be enhanced to daily at higher levels).
Most characters were picking up between 4 and 8 points of "free stats" (on top of level bonuses, etc etc); some were getting a lot more.

I understand there's some sort of +x bonus to stats per x number of levels, but it'll be spread out, no?

 

[Stalker0]

The one other thing we don't know is whether 4e's ability points will work like saga, where you get a +1 to TWO stats at 4th, 8th, etc.

This would allow people to roundoff character concepts a bit.

 

[Hairfoot]

For sake of simplicity, I will use the portmanteau "lopstatting".

No matter what debate ensues, you win the thread for using "portmanteau" in a sentence.

 

[DarkKestral]

My biggest concern is that tri-stat dumpstatting is still highly uneven. Some classes appear to be basically designed to focus on one stat almost to the exclusion of all else (Fighters and Wizards) while other classes look like they'll need equal infusions from 2-3 different stats to do well (Warlocks and Clerics) and then there are the ones which have primary stats which seem to compete (Clerics and Fighters) while others have primary stats which seem perfectly designed to avoid actual competition (Wizards and Warlocks) so the real problem of 3.5 looks to remain. MAD would not have been an issue in 3.5 if all classes had received equal benefit from 4 different stats while 2 had remained dumpstats. However, it was because some needed just one stat, others needed 2, several 3, and some badly designed ones 4, 5, or even 6. So the classes with 4 or more necessary stats suffered badly while others went directly to 18 or 20 for one or two stats and reaped the benefits. Unless I'm very much mistaken, Wizards will have significantly less reason to go beyond 10 in any stat except Int in this edition than even 3.5, so they'll be even easier to min-max, stat-wise, this time 'round: 18 (or more, where racial limits allow) in Int, remaining points in Con to max, then Wis or Cha depending on intended feat or ability choices. Likewise, I'm seeing fighter as 18 Str, cap Dex, remainder in Wis with a touch of Con to counter balance.

That's why I wanted all of the stats to have inherent benefits for ALL classes that they can't ignore; it means that all players have to make meaningful choices. Choices without meaning aren't choices at all. A wizard should have to consider whether or not he can afford taking that 18 in Int and thus 2 additional points on his spell attack rolls over 2 additional 2 chances to whip out something that saves the party from a TPK by burning an action point, or being able to carry more gear and more options in a fight or even a few more AC or HP to keep him from having to worry about that TPK. As it is, some classes may be helped a little bit, but I'm still not seeing an overall even design as far as MAD goes. Which is a shame.

 

[arscott]

Alternately, perhaps we're just seeing the flexibility of the system. It's not that Wizards require only int--It's just that the only Wizard character we've seen is built to be Int-focused, but the rules themselves provide for more stat-balanced wizards. Especially since we've already seen several wizard options that make use of Wis.

 

[DarkKestral]

Alternately, perhaps we're just seeing the flexibility of the system. It's not that Wizards require only int--It's just that the only Wizard character we've seen is built to be Int-focused, but the rules themselves provide for more stat-balanced wizards. Especially since we've already seen several wizard options that make use of Wis.

arscott: in at least one of the cases, the wis use was a mistake. IT's also probable that the rules provide for more int-focused wizards, in which case stat-balanced wizards probably will get the shaft unless they are multi-classing somehow.