Party AC difference

[Mengu]

And it is perfectly viable... a game where AC difference is 0 without any effort is really boring...

It is really he right decision to have some classes which don´t use armor without special training... there are classes that can´t do rituals without special traing...

of course, both is usually only one or two feat(s) away, but it means the character consciously decided that his wizard needs protection or that the eladrin figher can also perform some rituals...

If everything is the same, why bother at all...

Not trying to promote 0 AC difference. Just saying 4-5 seems like plenty of variance. The AC 15 Tiefling rogue, and AC 20 dwarf paladin seem reasonable at 1st level (monsters hit the rogue on a 9, the paladin on a 14). At 11th level when the rogue potentially sits at AC 23 and the dwarf is at AC 31 the dynamics have significantly changed (monsters hit the rogue on a 7, the paladin on a 15). The difference between them is that the rogue hasn't gotten the +3 armor yet, and the paladin spent 1 feat on AC. With different builds the difference can get more pronounced.

And whether a fighter has ritual caster or not has no bearing on combat, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. 4e is designed around everyone pulling their own weight in combat. Ability to create a magic campfire does not balance out +X AC. Yes it's a perfectly viable conscious choice if we're talking about feats, but only if your base AC puts you in the right order of magnitude for your party.

 

[keterys]

So getting back to the AC issue, it's real easy for monsters to attack a low AC Wizard or Sorcerer in many encounters.

All depends on how easy it is for them to repeatedly attack said low AC character and whether that character has any other defensive advantages.

Again, this is an issue that may vary a lot by party and enemies. I remember going through 8 combats with my paladin once and only 1 other person in the party had to spend a surge. I mean, I was burning through all my surges, of course. But my high AC was helping a _ton_ on things like guard drakes and such. Things like Valorous Smite (Sanction all within 3) and Call of Challenge (Ditto) help a lot for that.

Similarly, my Come and Get It fighter paired with a Swordmage partner managed to keep the attacks on the defenders for all but 1 battle. And in that battle the cleric got tore up at range by Reflex and Fortitude attacks mostly. In the very first round, before we got a chance to go, she got hit by a couple guys against AC. And then I pulled them all off her, killed everyone else, and she was fine.

Been playing a goliath barbarian who effectively lost 7 AC recently, after HAE got changed and I picked up a multiclass stance that's -2 AC for +4 damage. And that's a character who doesn't have the luxury of avoiding attacks, like a wizard or ranger. And yeah, it's totally fine. Actually, I like it better that my AC is no longer as good as the defender's.

Bard whose fighter and warden kept me not all that worried about my armor being 5 worse for a few levels. Usually I start ranged, then move into melee, so I do get exposed. I even provoke opportunity attacks to use ranged attacks in flank sometimes, to generate extra attacks and, well, whatever. The -2 from mark helps there too.

Warlord who has abilities that happen when he's bloodied that _wishes_ people would attack him more (though I'll admit he's only like 3 or 4 worse), but the defenders are too good grabbing targets. That and I use a spear.

AC gaps are extremely dealable, depending on what you run into. Especially at high level, we don't see that many archers. A lot more blasters for ranged. And positioning and tactics help with melee a lot. Even if you're vulnerable for one round, it's easy to divide or shutdown enemies after that.

And being vulnerable for one round is often just helpful for spreading the healing out.

 

[MrMyth]

No Defender can ever protect every single other member of his party for every other round. That's impossible.

Sure. But I don't think it is requisite for the Defender to absorb all attacks in an encounter. In a 5 monster encounter, at least 1-2 will certainly get past the Defender and go threaten the squishies. Honestly, that is as it should be, and that is where other tactics come into play - the strikers focus on taking those threats down first, the wizard breaks out his own tricks to get away or reduce the threat those enemies offer via various debilitating conditions, the leader heals anyone who starts to get in trouble.

Is the Wizard's low AC going to mean they will go down in a single swing to the enemy that got to them? Probably not. If multiple enemies focus on them, then yeah, they won't stay standing long. But... should they be able to soak up as much punishment as the Fighter? I certainly don't think so.

Of course, I'll admit that isn't really the argument on hand. It isn't a case of whether the Wizard should be less durable than the Fighter, but how much less durable they should be. And people's opinions will fall in different areas.

Here's the thing - a wizard who does have a high Int, leather armor proficiency, and some of the various wizards tricks (Shield, Staff of Defense, Blur, etc) is going to be pretty tough. If you make the base Wizard tougher, you risk having the tough Wizard overshoot the Fighter entirely - similar to the problems that cropped up with Avengers and Barbarians.

Now, that said, I think there is room to narrow the extremes. Making cloth a +1 armor bonus would honestly be a good start - Leather Armor Proficiency as a +2 AC boost makes it a hard feat to turn down, which is usually a sign of problematic design somewhere. On the other end of the extreme, maybe shields shouldn't give bonuses to defenses, but provide protection in another fashion.

But beyond that, I do think a Wizard or Sorcerer who invests absolutely nothing in defenses should be 6 or so points behind a tank that has focused heavily on defense. I agree that 9 is too much - though part of that came, in the earlier example given, from disparate gear as well.

In the end, if you want to limit those bonuses, you need to limit that factors that play into defenses. There is only so much room to do so without removing options entirely, or simply setting everyone to the default of having exactly the same AC.

At least these days the disparity still takes place within the range of the d20. If I need a 14 to hit the uber-defender, and an 8 to hit the frail wizard, they are still both affected by the roll of the dice.

The only real problem I see cropping up, honestly, is in temporary modifiers. I've seen a handful of those that are problematic. But the base numbers, and base variance, feels pretty much fine to me.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Not trying to promote 0 AC difference. Just saying 4-5 seems like plenty of variance. The AC 15 Tiefling rogue, and AC 20 dwarf paladin seem reasonable at 1st level (monsters hit the rogue on a 9, the paladin on a 14). At 11th level when the rogue potentially sits at AC 23 and the dwarf is at AC 31 the dynamics have significantly changed (monsters hit the rogue on a 7, the paladin on a 15). The difference between them is that the rogue hasn't gotten the +3 armor yet, and the paladin spent 1 feat on AC. With different builds the difference can get more pronounced.

And whether a fighter has ritual caster or not has no bearing on combat, so I'm not sure where you're going with that. 4e is designed around everyone pulling their own weight in combat. Ability to create a magic campfire does not balance out +X AC. Yes it's a perfectly viable conscious choice if we're talking about feats, but only if your base AC puts you in the right order of magnitude for your party.

I see the problem with stats increasing with level, but the rogue should actually not fall behind that far. Actually a defender who spends all his feats and paragon path to get in front of the expected curve is a conscious decision.

The argument of the ritual caster feat is that even without armor you can pull your weight in combat (beeing hit on a 7 is not that bad). If you are a class that has lower armor you usually have compensations:

a wizard has ritual casting for free and nice cantrips

a sorcerer has sorcerous power a great damage boost. with a single feat he can become en par ACwise... combat and out of combat don´t have to balance out completely, feats can close the gap pretty fast, usually at level one or 2.

To the defender problem:
it is the first iteration of D&D where there is actually a defender mechanism. And monsters should play a bit tactical. But you can protect someone wih lower AC. If monsters eat too many OAs just for closing it is no ciable choice. Of course, when your group has just a single defender to protect 5 squishies than it is a group problem. at least 3 characters need to be able to melee maybe even 4. More than one person with a lower AC is a really bad choice, but the rest of the party, strikers included should be able to hold their ground.

The wizard actually has tools for single shots which may hit him. He can use mirror image, shield, staff of defense for those cases where a defender is bypassed and send the enemy back into defender range with an at will. So why all the complaining, i just don´t get it.

 

[KarinsDad]

Again, this is an issue that may vary a lot by party and enemies. I remember going through 8 combats with my paladin once and only 1 other person in the party had to spend a surge. I mean, I was burning through all my surges, of course. But my high AC was helping a _ton_ on things like guard drakes and such. Things like Valorous Smite (Sanction all within 3) and Call of Challenge (Ditto) help a lot for that.

Similarly, my Come and Get It fighter paired with a Swordmage partner managed to keep the attacks on the defenders for all but 1 battle. And in that battle the cleric got tore up at range by Reflex and Fortitude attacks mostly. In the very first round, before we got a chance to go, she got hit by a couple guys against AC. And then I pulled them all off her, killed everyone else, and she was fine.

This is WAY outside of my experience. Even looking at encounters on LEB and such, I have never ever seen this. This sounds like extreme examples.

We have a Come and Get It fighter paired with a Swordmage partner in our home game and they are not able to do this.

I suspect this has more to do with your DM and how he creates and manages encounters than with the abilities and tactics of the PCs. Sorry, but it just doesn't make sense that 8 encounters could occur and only one PC other than the defender used a single healing surge. Were the rest of the PCs in a different county?


The design intent of 4E encounters was to challenge the entire party, not just the defender. Larger areas, few narrow corridors, the ability to move diagonally as quickly as horizontal or vertical. I don't doubt that what you say happened in your game, but it is very far from typical and should not be used to debate that the potential AC delta is reasonable.

 

[Flipguarder]

I don't agree with KD often but the party I DM has a paladin, a swordmage and a fighter. The other 2 guys get hit not as frequently as the paladin and fighter but usually more than the swordmage (cuz the coward always runs away from the enemy he marks, and teleports everywhere, sneaky bastard.)

It has something to do with how you play marks, sure. But Im under the opinion that this issue has almost EVERYTHING to do with how often you use ranged monsters.

If you build a group of monsters like a party it looks something like this (a battle I plan for the future)

1 Elite brute Level +1
2 artillery Level +2
1 elite soldier (leader) Level +1
1 regular soldier level=
6-8 ranged skirmisher minions level =

This is a team that cares about marks and position, but it doesn't dictate their actions.


Yes I understand this is a hard battle, but they keep breezing through my encounters so I gotta lay some smack down.

 

[Mengu]

a sorcerer has sorcerous power a great damage boost. with a single feat he can become en par ACwise... combat and out of combat don´t have to balance out completely, feats can close the gap pretty fast, usually at level one or 2.

Well, this is sort of what I'm getting at. If you play a close blast dragon sorcerer and the only defender in your 5-man party is a swordmage, is picking up leather an average option? A really good idea? Or a must have? I would prefer if it was an average option, but as it stands, it's either a really good idea, or a must have.

 

[keterys]

This is WAY outside of my experience. Even looking at encounters on LEB and such, I have never ever seen this. This sounds like extreme examples.

LEB?

We have a Come and Get It fighter paired with a Swordmage partner in our home game and they are not able to do this.

How many rounds does it take you guys to kill stuff? That may be a lot of it, too. How about how much control you bring? I can often lock things down pretty good for a couple rounds, but then we're out. But that's plenty long enough to drop things down to just a few key people. The swordmage also has interrupt powers where he teleports people out of attacks.

In the example where my paladin prevented anyone else from needing to spend surges, I was backed up by a wizard with storm pillar & grasping shadows to funnel enemies and chilling cloud to give them -2 attack. I'll say right now that a shield + plate pally at low level with an extra -2 on enemies' attacks is in _very_ good shape, and 7 radiant is a very big deal against 1st-3rd level enemies.

I did a different run with him once where I didn't have to spend any surges, cause the DM often did not follow mark, or missed me (nothing like sanctioning 3 halfling slingers and then not getting hit, poor DM), or in one combat I got 10 free healing from a shaman daily. Mind you, I did soooo much damage from sanction, I was outdoing the strikers. And the -2 attack helped the enemies miss a bit, and he did most of his damage from FRW-targeting area attacks, so I'm not sure it really worked that well for the DM.

I suspect this has more to do with your DM and how he creates and manages encounters than with the abilities and tactics of the PCs. Sorry, but it just doesn't make sense that 8 encounters could occur and only one PC other than the defender used a single healing surge. Were the rest of the PCs in a different county?

If we'd had to rest after the final encounter, I'm sure they'd have used some,but... that's pretty close to what we did, yes. Which is part of the point, right? We were playing an all changeling group that was bluffing and sneaking our way in as much as possible. We had two other people doing melee, one of whom needed to be in melee (barbarian), the other of which didn't really (rogue) so would get into melee later. I was sanctioning as much as possible, especially early in the fight, including doing ardent sanction charges using a badge of the berserker I'd gotten.

The first encounter actually started, for some obscure reason, with me completely surrounded by enemies and the party like 16 squares away. So, yeah, they were fine.

The next couple encounters we initiated.

First one was against a group of rogues gambling. So I went to go gamble in the middle of them to provide a good target. Some went before me, attacked me, cause hey, flanking me. Then I valorous smited.

The next one I went first, moved, challenged, then ardent charged a guy next to him, then valorous smited, to sanction the entire rest of the group.

I mean, rest of the PCs are 6-10 squares away and you're paladin sanctioned, that's a good reason to hang around.

Later storming a defended position, not much I can do to keep the archers off the rest of the party. So, they used a lot of terrain and gave them penalties to attack, until we could nail them down.

Sneaking around, we managed to avoid an ambush and set up a corridor fight against a huge mess of mostly melee guys... so challenge one guy, ardent strike the other, barbarian is beside me, they're at -2 from chilling cloud.

So, yeah, I took extreme risks to multi-challenge lots of guys and most of my party was far away. And it worked out that they weren't in much danger as a result.

The fighter event was more normal.

First fight: Spread out area, I took half, the swordmage took the other half, cleric 'turned' an elemental to force him a bit aways. We obliterated one guy, I left another guy with the rogue to go deal with more interesting things and he missed the rogue, then the swordmage teleported someone else that was getting attacked, and then that fight was locked and set.

Second fight: Odd warehouse with sorta corridors, lots of cover, lots of sneaking and sniping. We do mass concentrated destruction in the center to drop about half the guys, then again I cover one half, he covers the other half.

Third fight: "Ambushed" we've got guys on all sides. Cleric gets surrounded in back by a few minions and one real guy. Swordmage bears most of the brunt in the front (cause that's where he was) and a ranged caster is picking on the cleric. On my turn I CaGI & AP Divine Power - end result is cleric + rogue are no longer threatened, between pull and push, and all the minions on my side are dead. I then keep 3 guys occupied, with me and the rogue killing one per round, while the swordmage holds off the other half of the combat til we get over there.

The design intent of 4E encounters was to challenge the entire party, not just the defender. Larger areas, few narrow corridors, the ability to move diagonally as quickly as horizontal or vertical. I don't doubt that what you say happened in your game, but it is very far from typical and should not be used to debate that the potential AC delta is reasonable.

It should be used just as much as a hypothetical 'The range 20 character gets attacked against AC every encounter' should be used I mean, I've done combats in which AC doesn't get attacked _at all_, nevermind had ranged characters going after AC. Those are actually pretty rare in Paragon - mostly going against FRW.

 

[keterys]

And, just as a reminder, I still voted 4-5 I think I personally support a system where expected drift is a maximum of 6 - about 4 from build, and about 2 circumstancial.

 

[KarinsDad]

LEB?

Living Eberron

How many rounds does it take you guys to kill stuff?

It depends, but they are level 15 now and many foes have so many hit points that they do not fall in a few rounds, even with focused fire and two strikers in the group now.

Most same level foes (15) have ~150 hit points and higher level foes typically have more. Plus, not every attack hits. So even when the strikers do 40 or 50 or more hits points of damage some rounds and the non-strikers do 20 to 30 and several PCs are targeting the same foe, it still sometimes takes a couple of rounds to drop the first foe since not everyone usually has the luxury to attack the same foe every round.

For example, the Fighter with Come and Get It can do 100 points of damage with it. But, it tends to be 25 points against 4 foes, its never 100 points against 1. Similar for the Swordmage who tends to split his larger damage attacks between 2 foes.

And at Paragon, the monsters also have a trick or two up their sleeves. There are a lot of them with daze (~1 in 4) or stun (~1 in 8) or something else. In fact, most encounters I run have something interesting in it (be that terrain, or traps, or area attacks, or something) that challenges the players. I don't run encounters where most foes calmly walk up to the Defender(s) and allow him to lock them down. The Defenders get a slightly greater share of foes to lock down, but the rest of the foes go against the rest of the PCs.

Monsters also don't often just come from one direction. Even if the PCs enter a room, there are monsters in a multi-foe encounter to the left, right, and straight ahead, not typically just straight ahead. And at Paragon level, a lot more monsters are large or larger, so area attacks tend to get fewer monsters within them than at Heroic.

It should be used just as much as a hypothetical 'The range 20 character gets attacked against AC every encounter' should be used I mean, I've done combats in which AC doesn't get attacked _at all_, nevermind had ranged characters going after AC. Those are actually pretty rare in Paragon - mostly going against FRW.

I don't see it. Almost every foe in the game system has an AC attack (94% in the MM). In fact, 40% of the monsters in the MM only have an AC attack. NAD attacks tend to also be encounter only or recharge.

I also don't see range 20 encounters. Most PCs without bows do not have range 20 attacks and even if they did, most encounters I have run, or seen in Dungeon, or written by WotC do not allow for 20 range attacks. There are often things like walls in the way.

And over a third of monsters in the Compendium have ranged attacks. So if a PC can attack them at range 10, some of them can attack back at range 10. And a significant majority of ranged attacks in the Compendium go against AC. Controllers and Lurkers tend to go against NADs with ranged attacks, but Skirmishers, Artillery, Soldiers and Brutes typically go against AC with ranged attacks.


Sure, one could run an unusual set of combats like the ones you specified, but I opine that the typical encounter is one where most or all of the PCs are actually threatened at least some of the time.