New Group - 4 edition - Would like some imput

[Dr_Sage]

Good evening!

I will start DMing to a group of friends and I would like some advice on builds. We have been working of the backgrounds and the campaign, and I will propose the character sheets (or will approve theirs).

I personally enjoy well rounded characters, consistent and "classic". We all have a reasonable D&D experience, but none of us are optimizers and character engineers (no offense, hehehe). We will start at 1st level.

I would love to get ideas for builds, paragon paths, powers, feats, gear. We are not looking for uber-optimized, just funcional and I don't want to accidentally trap my players (like giving to one of them a hammer with low constitution etc.).

Let me talk a little bit about how the party will look like:


- Dragonborn warlord: probably inspiring, but we are not sure yet. He will be someone involved in the talking, with a high probability of becoming an unofficial party leader. The player is very experienced and I am confident he will be happy to fulfill these roles.

- Human rogue: she will be an educated woman, not a street scum. She will most likely be an agent of some kind, similar to a fantasy medieval police force. She will start the campaign with a mission. I am seriously considering her to be artfull dodger.
Side note: usually the rogue's player is a very straightforward person, and tends fo forget special actions (interrupts, reactions etc.), so the build cannot be complicated to play.

- Human paladin: Most certaily a strenght-based paladin (maybe balanced, but probably not). Knowing the player I believe he will be happy with "striker-level" of damage, so I was considering giving him a big weapon.
The player is on the "Stark-mode" (from Winterfell, not from Marvel), he loves Eddard Stark (don't we all?), so I was trying to imagine a young Eddard Stark, and I found photos of Boromir, hehehehe.

- Eladrin Wizard: the player is a very easy-going person, very fun to play with. She just LOVES to teleport around. I am thinking about the huge Int+Dex that she can have, qualifying for the wand/weapliment and dual implement thing, but I admit I am really confused about how to build on this concept (weapliments confuses me, help...). The other detail is, as much as she is a dice-roller and loves to spread damage, I believe she is on a control wizard mood.

- Dwarf Ranger [Crossbow]: Another classic concept, a little difficult to pull in the 4 edition, so suggestions will be welcome. I am seriosly considering using hunter style.

Any inputs will be welcome.

Regards!

 

[Ferghis]

Setting your font to black really screws the folks that have set their default background to dark colors. You can edit your post to change this.

 

[Ferghis]

None of the characters sound highly optimized, so you should be fine if you want to stick within the guidelines. 4e is hard to break, so don't worry too much about unbalancedness. Challenging enemies are at party level+2, or thereabouts, and don't go much above that: better to increase the number of enemies than increase their level.

Side note: usually the rogue's player is a very straightforward person, and tends fo forget special actions (interrupts, reactions etc.), so the build cannot be complicated to play.

Help them build a sheet based on action type, so you know that you basically get one of each. This helped me a lot when dealing with odd actions.

Human paladin: Most certaily a strenght-based paladin (maybe balanced, but probably not). Knowing the player I believe he will be happy with "striker-level" of damage, so I was considering giving him a big weapon.

Paladins have trouble doing a lot of damage, although there are hybrid paladin|warlock builds that do better. I suggest going with an avenger instead. It's a simple mechanic, and has a very similar fluff.

Eladrin Wizard: the player is a very easy-going person, very fun to play with. She just LOVES to teleport around.

I suggest multiclassing warlock and using the feat that swaps for a level 10 at-will that gives the warlock the ability to teleport at will as a move action. Fix the fact that it only teleports one square by taking the arcane familiar feat, and selecting the disembodied hand (or, at paragon, rakshasha's claw) to use a few items to boost that teleport:
Incisive Dagger
Rubicant Blade
Mithrendain Steel Weapon
Cloak of Translocation
Eladrin Boots
Rod of Malign Conveyance

Dwarf Ranger [Crossbow]: Another classic concept, a little difficult to pull in the 4 edition, so suggestions will be welcome. I am seriosly considering using hunter style.

Consider the Seeker. It's a lousy class, but in 4e that's not that bad a thing.

 

[Ferghis]

Be warned about that familiar, though. It can be abused, if you grant a lot of items.

 

[Unwise]

Here are some initial thoughts on the characters:

- Dragonborn warlord - really hard to get wrong I think. A warlord is best when giving up their at-wills to let a striker with a great basic attack have a go. You might want to check with the player if he is OK with that, or if he wants to avoid that.

- Human rogue - I would definitely go for the essentials Thief rather than a rogue. It is far more straight forward and easy to play for this type of player. It also has the advantage of not using a second stat, so you can afford to make the character charismatic and intelligent if that fits the character concept well. A Thief also does great damage with a basic attack, which ties in well with the warlord. Other than that, if you really want to use a rogue, I would make the character and artful dodger for the charisma stat if they want to play an agent.

- Human Paladin - I would suggest that if you want to have this character doing damage anywhere near approaching a striker, he will have to be far more optimized than the other characters. There are ways to make a paladin hit hard, but they are deeply into optimization and often require specific items to make them excel. If he wants to be doing damage as a knight, he could consider a Blackguard instead, taking the Vice of Fury and being the 'savage northerner' knight. An essentials Cavalier can do great damage when mounted, but only average damage when not.

- Eladrin Wizard - I would seriously consider looking at a Warlock by the description you gave. Some varieties do a lot of teleporting. They are bad Strikers but competent Controllers. A rather weird class that is better at their secondary role than their primary in some ways. For a more martial arcane flavour, a Swordmage does a lot of teleporting and combined with being an Eladrin has amazing feat support (White Lotus, Eladrin Swordmage Advance, Fey Charge).

- Dwarf Crossbower - So your options here are Ranger, Rogue Cunning Sneak with training in Nature, Hunter, Seeker, Artificer. Given that the Artificer is an odd concept and the party has a rogue I would lean towards the others. The Seeker would match his dwarven stats well, but quiet frankly are awful. You would have to optimise the character very heavily to not be overshadowed by any other controller. The ranger is always a good option and the hit to Dex will hurt but is workable. Does he want to be able to fight up close too? He could be a Dex/Str ranger, get Quickdraw and make full use of Twin-Strike both in and out of melee.

Hunter is an interesting option, they are amazing controllers at lower levels, they have so many good options. As the game progresses though, and the wizards etc get more daily powers, their control becomes rather overshadowed. In my experience the best hunters at later levels are the ones that can double as a backup Striker. This is much easier if they are a humans so can pick up Twin-Striker. Also in paragon, they multi-class to seeker and get a feat that lets them add their Dex onto every basic attacks damage. As all of their attacks are basic attacks it works very well and helps make up for the fact that their controlling is no longer as impressive. One major thing to remember about hunters is that they are applying their controlling effects 65 squares away. Lets see a wizard do that! The thing is, as a DM, don't get too married to your battlegrid. Let him use his character to the fullest. Let them whittle down the enemy before they even close. I once had the hunter bloody a dragon by the time the poor thing managed to close with the group.

My final suggestion would be to have the first adventure take place in an area with a lot of other adventurers around. In 4th edition of they are not familiar with it, players often find that they don't like the roll that they have taken on. You may want them to be able to swap a character out without having to completely restart the campaign.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Seconding some kind of Warlock. A Feypact Warlock has some T-port stuff built in at level 1, and the class' ShadowWalk ability is kind of a soft "Blink" effect that gives concealment as long as the PC moves 3sq. Because of that, the Hidden Sniper Feat is practically a must for warlocks- it gives attack bonuses when the PC has concealment.

Taking Eldritch Strike instead of Eldritch blast would give the PC a credible melee threat.

Some of the Warlock powers are controlly, some give teleports. A few- like Mirror Darkly (HoS p91)- even let you create a magical copy of yourself that can serve as a different source point for powers.

You could even MC or hybrid with one of the Cha Sorcerer builds for added punch & flexibility.

 

[sabrinathecat]

It is hard to go wrong with any of the basic builds in the PH1.
Keep it simple: no hybrids first time out.
Warlocks are fun, but a lot of attention to detail required to get comparable performance to other strikers. Also, to take full advantage of basic class features, warlocks have to use move, minor, and standard actions every round (unless the fight is vs a solo). No other class I've seen is that mechanically complicated.

A dwarf fighter is a great combo. Whether 2 weapon or weapon&shield, it just works extremely well.

Really, it is hard to build a bad character. Some just aren't as logical a combination. Still, a Halfling Devoted Cleric is amazingly capable.

 

[Quickleaf]

[MENTION=36185]Dr_Sage[/MENTION] You're the DM right? Did the players ask you to build their characters for them? It seems like an odd request from a DM.

Have you visited the D&D CharOp boards yet? Some good advice there.

 

[TerraDave]

(An aside in response to above, a classic, non-essentials, rogue can be a lot of fun).

With all the stuff in DDI, character concepts that probably would have not worked that well out of the PHB can be supported. (Though the dwarf ranger will be the trickiest, followed by the paladin).

You just need to keep an eye on numbers to make sure you don't get huge disparities in attack bonuses and everybody has at least one or two decent defenses. Otherwise 4E is very robust, and balance is less of a concern then in other editions.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

One of the guys in our group played a rogue who took the Warlock's Eyebite as his half-elf power...nasty.