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Non-AC Defenses
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<blockquote data-quote="eamon" data-source="post: 4982036" data-attributes="member: 51942"><p>That's not a bad idea; but it's pretty orthogonal to the issue of defenses. Currently, FRW are not commonly targeted; and the fix does raise them to levels where monster damage (or effects) will be greatly impacted - after all, most damage still comes attacks vs. AC, and even after the fix FRW defenses won't generally be high, they just won't be trivially hit.</p><p></p><p>To avoid grind, more damage may be useful. On the other hand, raising defenses fixes something else; namely the dramatic imbalance between attacks vs. AC and attacks vs. FRW. Rather, fixing FRW defenses may well <em>also reduce</em> grind by avoiding situations where mono-thematic encounters happen to have single effects that are virtually impossible to shake (i.e. parties that are dazed almost nonstop because they're always hit by dazing controller powers).</p><p></p><p>So let's not mix up these two discussions. You can add extra damage even without fixing defenses, and you can fix the FRW defenses without adding extra damage; both work independently. They also both have independently complex side effects (i.e. extra damage reduces the effectiveness of leaders, but raising all stats changes class build balance), so confouding them makes it trickier to evaluate the consequences.</p><p></p><p>In terms of stat raises, I'd strongly be in favor of raising <em>all</em> stats rather than just three as a fix. Raising only three stats doesn't fix the entire problem (witness classes with aligned primary and secondary stats), and it does fix divergence of things like skills and init nor the requirement for extensive char-planning (which 4e was supposed to reduce). On the other hand, raising all stats hardly increases the problematic aspects of the fix; these being the possibility of imbalances made possible by avoiding feat prereq's (after all, even adding just one extra stat raise is probably enough to make 99% of all stat prereqs easily achieveable with planning). So, if you want a stat-based fix, I'd go whole hog and happily get rid of a bunch of problems related to stat modifier divergence by doing so, rather than just fix the weakest defense in some of the cases.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="eamon, post: 4982036, member: 51942"] That's not a bad idea; but it's pretty orthogonal to the issue of defenses. Currently, FRW are not commonly targeted; and the fix does raise them to levels where monster damage (or effects) will be greatly impacted - after all, most damage still comes attacks vs. AC, and even after the fix FRW defenses won't generally be high, they just won't be trivially hit. To avoid grind, more damage may be useful. On the other hand, raising defenses fixes something else; namely the dramatic imbalance between attacks vs. AC and attacks vs. FRW. Rather, fixing FRW defenses may well [I]also reduce[/I] grind by avoiding situations where mono-thematic encounters happen to have single effects that are virtually impossible to shake (i.e. parties that are dazed almost nonstop because they're always hit by dazing controller powers). So let's not mix up these two discussions. You can add extra damage even without fixing defenses, and you can fix the FRW defenses without adding extra damage; both work independently. They also both have independently complex side effects (i.e. extra damage reduces the effectiveness of leaders, but raising all stats changes class build balance), so confouding them makes it trickier to evaluate the consequences. In terms of stat raises, I'd strongly be in favor of raising [I]all[/I] stats rather than just three as a fix. Raising only three stats doesn't fix the entire problem (witness classes with aligned primary and secondary stats), and it does fix divergence of things like skills and init nor the requirement for extensive char-planning (which 4e was supposed to reduce). On the other hand, raising all stats hardly increases the problematic aspects of the fix; these being the possibility of imbalances made possible by avoiding feat prereq's (after all, even adding just one extra stat raise is probably enough to make 99% of all stat prereqs easily achieveable with planning). So, if you want a stat-based fix, I'd go whole hog and happily get rid of a bunch of problems related to stat modifier divergence by doing so, rather than just fix the weakest defense in some of the cases. [/QUOTE]
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