Non-AC Defenses

[Rothe_]

I actually think that 4e encourages focusing on one area of expertise. When you do a character like this, some people then say is an example of making a "one trick pony" character.

I disagree. I think that one trick ponies exist, but they are even more specialised than just someone putting an 18 in one stat. Most of the true one trick ponies are in fact using a ton of feats and items to make their tactic work (often just using one at-will repeatedly) whereas a focused character can still make use of several tactics and still have his "18" stat.

I actually think the game is more fun with focused characters working as a team than having a team of broadly skilled characters. With broad range of "average" abilities, your characters end up having more similarities which I don't think is anything to aim at.

So, back to the actual subject. Even if you do have 18 in stat(s), you should still not be totally gimped for having low NAD's. Maybe one defense can be really low, but that is part of the game - it should not be a big problem unless the DM purposefully overuses attacks vs. one specific defense.

 

[eamon]

@eamon:

i believe, you are a bit overestimating the importance of an 18 in your primary. Although I can follow your reasoning and generally agree with always increasing your primary at all opportunities, it is often worth considering not always increasing your secondary to increase your FR or W defense AND qualify for feats.

I don't think an 18 is by any means required. However, I believe that it's harder to screw up a character by raising his primary too high than it is by leaving it too low.

Most people on this board are probably reasonably adept at building chars; I mean - there's some self selection going on by even choosing to participate here. But that doesn't hold for everyone. I've yet to see a single character that was largely irrelevant in combat because he maxxed out his primary stat. But I've seen many, many characters become irrelevant and boring to their players by having a poor primary.

Hence my recommendation: start with the 18/14/11 distribution (just like the character builder auto-picks) and adapt as needed. It's a fine (fairly safe) default - not necessarily optimal, but not everyone enjoys character optimization.

In any case, this is distinct from how I think the game should work - it's just how it happens to work now.

How about the +1 to all stats rule at ?4 and ?8 levels of a tier, and +1 to hit and NADs at the ?5 levels of a tier?

 

[Jhaelen]

I pretty much agree with Infiniti2000. In my game I only allow the standard array. If a player chooses to neglect one of his defenses, I don't mind, but please, don't come complaining afterwards!

Not to mention the fact that some builds have primary+secondary stats that boost the same NAD - these guys are screwed no matter what, and will have low NADs.

That, however, is really an issue. I think all of these builds should have something to compensate.

I've created quite a few example characters to investigate this and there's (almost) always a way to make sure your weakest defense doesn't lag too far behind. The question is: what's it worth to you?

There are players that prefer having the highest defenses possible for their characters, even at the expense of their offensive power. In 3E I've seen characters that switched classes at almost every level just to increase their saving throws.

Then there are players who frankly don't care. They'll argue that there's no point in trying to cover up your weaknesses and instead continue to boost whatever they're already very good at.

Both approaches and (especially) everything inbetween can work. Just be aware of the consequences.

 

[keterys]

Wasn't a psychologically satisfying success rate 70 %? So from the PCs site monsters should have a 30 % chance to hit you on your highest defense? But then from the DM side, you might want a 70 % chance to hit? Maybe only on the PC's lowest defense?

Of course, this has to take into account typical modifiers (combat advantage).

So aiming for a 70% hit chance on a PCs lowest defense and 30% on a PCs highest defense, varying to a more moderate amount for more balanced defenses, is probably about right.

 

[sfedi]

I'm kinda reluctant to mess with the stat boosts, but I see how this would help.

I was reluctant too.
It brings some preerquisites requirements problems, which I didn't account for.
But this seems the solution that brings:
- a smoother progression
- works well with the Character Builder (the +1 to FRWs is a little bit difficult)
- solves the problem (it still leaves the PCs 1 point behind, this is intentional)

Perhaps a feat which allows you to use your second-highest stat for a defense could serve a similar function without affecting prereqs and whatnot? One downside to such a feat is it comes across as contrived and complex, though.

I only allow the paragon FRW that gives you a +2.
A character who has his primary and secondary stat in the same defense should pay that feat if he wants to catch up.
Even then, he will lag 1 pointat higher levels

Raising three stats doesn't fix builds which have a primary and secondary that raise the same NAD. Right now, this doesn't much matter: since all PC's NADs are generally terrible anyhow, the DM needs to tread lightly here, and having two very weak NADs vs one weak and one very weak NAD doesn't much matter then. But if NADs become relevent, this could turn out to be a drawback.

That's a problem with class design, not with NADs progression.
But as I mentioned above, I find that the player can overcome this.

Why actually not just raise all stats at levels 4/8? This would have another nice side effect it reducing the skill discrepency slightly. Right now, skills quickly diverge and PC's quickly fall into either the dominating category or the hopeless category. Raising all stats would somewhat diminish that, and it'd may make more balanced characters a little more rewarding. It'd reduce NAD variability, of course, as well. (You'd still need the 5/15/25 boost, though).

The problem with raising all stats is that you leave out choices.

Although the smoothing of skill bonuses is VERY nice.

 

[KarinsDad]

I've created quite a few example characters to investigate this and there's (almost) always a way to make sure your weakest defense doesn't lag too far behind. The question is: what's it worth to you?

However, people shouldn't have to do this.

The game should just work, right out of the box.

Not every player puts in the effort you and other people did. If fact, the vast majority do not. They just play the game, pick what they like, and it's only after the fact when their PC starts getting higher level and they get hit a lot of the time on several of their NADs that they start getting frustrated and realize there's a problem.

If a PC has a 4 difference between two defenses at level 1, they shouldn't have a 9 difference at level 30.

That's just flat out mechanically flawed, regardless of there being a way to sort of, kind of, possibly, avoiding the problem by "investigating" alternatives.

And the fact that people MUST take feats in order for the sort of, kind of, possibly solutions to work indicates a second flaw. Feats should be the ability to go from ok to good, not to go from terrible to still terrible.

 

[keterys]

As far as I can tell, the primary flaw is actually that stats increase at all. If they didn't, it would solve quite a number of problems.

 

[sfedi]

100% agree with KarinsDad.

As far as I can tell, the primary flaw is actually that stats increase at all. If they didn't, it would solve quite a number of problems.

If they didn't you would have to have another mechanism to increase character's damage, FRWs, etc.

I'm not saying it would be worse, but you can't get rid of stat increase without introducing another mechanic.

 

[keterys]

If they didn't you would have to have another mechanism to increase character's damage, FRWs, etc.

Damage only increases by 4 over 30 levels, that's easy to account for.

But, yes, entire subsystems like masterwork armor were made due to stat increases. It'd require some cleanup.

I still think it would be better than what we have

 

[eamon]

I pretty much agree with Infiniti2000. In my game I only allow the standard array.

From a player's perspective, that seems like an unnecessary limitation of options. Why do this?

If a player chooses to neglect one of his defenses, I don't mind, but please, don't come complaining afterwards!

This is also completely unreasonable. The low NAD's are not due to player decisions but due to an imbalance in the base game. If you compare (for instance) 18/14/11 with 16/14/13/etc. you'll note that the standard array's lowest NAD is one point higher, whereas the it's highest nad is one lower. All in all, that's probably a loss simply because your lowest NAD will often be hit no matter what (the difference between being hit on a 10 vs. an 11 matters more than the difference between being hit on a 2 vs 3, and obvious much more than the difference between being hit on 2 vs anything below 2).

Punishing players for not being able to keep their lowest NAD relevant is ridiculous; the vast majority of characters have no real options to avoid being trivially easy to hit for the vast majority of NAD-targetting monsters - which, going by the numbers, are rare and only likely to be prevalent if the DM is actively out to screw you. Which we all know a DM can do anyhow.