Playtest: The Druid (merged)

[firesnakearies]

I also don't think the 4e druid can "tank". Facilitate a striker in a sense, yes, but they don't have the AC, HP or marking power of a "tank", nor the extra damage of a striker. Woe be you who uses the druid as your front line.

Maybe not the AC or HP, but Call of the Beast makes Divine Challenge look like a child's petulant pout of marking.

And a dwarf druid with a 20 Con could have pretty darn respectable HP and AC, too. 3 less HP than an equivalent fighter, and equal AC to a fighter in scale mail with a light shield. That's hardly "woe" worthy.


EDIT: Dwarf druid with a 20 Con in Beast Form with the Staff Fighting feat starts with a 19 AC, which is as good as scale mail plus a heavy shield. As soon as he can pick up Two Weapon Defense, he's got a 20, before anything special like magic items, buffs, stat increases, paragon path features, paragon feats, and so on. (Which means, from there on out, he's got the same AC as paladins and fighters.)

EDIT 2: And all of this is BEFORE we see all of the druid-specific feats and other goodies which will invariably end up making them BETTER tanks than fighters. Mark my words.

 

[Cadfan]

I wouldn't call Fires of Life little. It could potentially pass out 90 points of free, non-surge-using healing to your party, at 1st level. Who else could do anything even remotely close to that? I know that's a pretty unlikely scenario, but it's possible.

Through similar logic, with an 18 intelligence, Scorching Burst can do 36 more points of damage than Chill Wind. And Fireball is an unstoppable juggernaut of destruction that potentially deals 147d6+392 damage every time my party's wizard casts it.

And really, in nearly any case in which you'd actually choose to use it, you'd probably end up getting more healing out of it than any other 1st level power gives out.

I wouldn't make that assumption. Its a burst 1. You need as many targets in there as possible.

If you miss a target in the burst, you get half of 1d6+wis damage.
If you hit a target, but it makes a save against the ongoing damage before it dies, an ally heals your Con mod in damage.
If you hit a target, and it dies before it can save against the ongoing damage, an ally heals 5 plus your Con mod.

That's a lot of things to come together at once inside a Burst 1. The damage is alright, so I can't say the power is bad, but if you're looking for more than a slight healing bonus this really isn't the power for you.

Your ideal situation for healing is to bomb a couple of minions with it, but even with, say, four minions, you're going to miss about 2. So you're going to get to heal 10+2[Con]. Of course, as payment for that healing, you're killing the same number of minions with a daily power that you could have killed with Chill Wind. Which is sort of a waste of a daily power that deals 1d6+Wis +5 ongoing fire damage.

And its not really fair to compare a daily attack power to a daily utility power. They're really not on the same power scale. Beacon of Hope has the potential to heal far, far more hit points than this spell ever will. All you need is to have two allies in the (far larger) burst of Beacon of Hope and an 18 wisdom cleric can heal 18 damage, plus whatever gains you get from Weakening your enemies, plus whatever gains you get from improving your other healing powers for the duration of the fight.

 

[Cadfan]

I also don't think the 4e druid can "tank". Facilitate a striker in a sense, yes, but they don't have the AC, HP or marking power of a "tank", nor the extra damage of a striker. Woe be you who uses the druid as your front line.

I'm kind of worried that the druid will find himself tanking even though he doesn't mean to. He's loaded with melee powers that slow and daze.

Slowing an enemy who's adjacent to you makes it more likely to attack you.

Same with dazing an enemy who's adjacent to you.

You get the idea. I think that survival may require careful use of defender allies and shifting away from foes who can't move and attack in the same round.

 

[MrMyth]

I'm kind of worried that the druid will find himself tanking even though he doesn't mean to. He's loaded with melee powers that slow and daze.

Slowing an enemy who's adjacent to you makes it more likely to attack you.

Same with dazing an enemy who's adjacent to you.

You get the idea. I think that survival may require careful use of defender allies and shifting away from foes who can't move and attack in the same round.

I think that is the biggest advantage of the free shift when popping out of Wild Shape. Round 1, cast a spell, wild shape. Round 2, move into melee, debuff an enemy, then wild shape - escaping melee, and leaving the enemy unable to attack you. It doesn't work with slow, but it does work with daze/immobilize/prone. I really see this as key to the melee controller concept, without turning into a (fragile) defender in the process.

 

[MrMyth]

This might be, but a Preview is just an Advertisement and quite useless for a Dragon Subscriber. Level 1-3 is to low for most ongoing campaigns and new Campaigns will surely not include a Class since you soon outgrow that level and that player would have to change his Character.

It's nice to have something to quell the curiosity about the new classes, but I want Articles that can actually be used by Players or the GM.

This month's Dragon has the same number of articles and columns as usual, entirely outside of the previews. I prefer to view the previews as bonus content, which I'm more than happy to get - and many others seem pleased with as well, rather than simply useless. I certainly agree that I wouldn't want this to replace all the usual content in the magazine - but as that doesn't seem to be happening, I'm not too worried.

 

[Cadfan]

MrMyth- You're absolutely correct, I think.

 

[Zsig]

Hum... Slowing and Sliding people with Opportinuty Attacks seems rather sexy to me.

Yeah, I guess theoretically they could make some interesting pseudo-Defenders, more than that, only seeing them playing in game to make a judgement.

 

[Sir Brennen]

I wonder how multi-classing into Druid will be handled. Without allowing Wildshape as part of the initial multi-class feat, that's a whole category of powers which characters dipping into Druid won't have access to. But how would you limit Wildshape to be on par with other multi-class feats if you did include it?

 

[Fallen Seraph]

I wonder how multi-classing into Druid will be handled. Without allowing Wildshape as part of the initial multi-class feat, that's a whole category of powers which characters dipping into Druid won't have access to. But how would you limit Wildshape to be on par with other multi-class feats if you did include it?

Hmm... Well we have Multi-Class ones like Sneak Attack where you can use it once per-encounter. Perhaps it could be like Wild Shape is usable once Daily. So you could use all the Beast Powers you got in a fight, but as soon as you transform back into human form thats it.

 

[Sir Brennen]

Hmm... Well we have Multi-Class ones like Sneak Attack where you can use it once per-encounter. Perhaps it could be like Wild Shape is usable once Daily. So you could use all the Beast Powers you got in a fight, but as soon as you transform back into human form thats it.

That would have the effect of making any Beast Form Encounter powers the character takes also reduced to Dailies, and any At-Wills... well, still At-Wills, but only for one encounter. Seems additionally limiting for the multi-classer.

Seems most limits to Wildshape would have this compounding effect on the Beast Form powers. Maybe you just won't be able to get Wildshape without being a primary Druid. Which kinda bites, because there's so many cool character concepts that could be built around a shape-changing non-druid character...