Retraining basic attacks

[Keenath]

You Paragon Path is part of your class table. It's right there on page 29.

So what? The fact that Paragon powers are listed on the class table has nothing to do with anything. The point of mentioning the class table was "when your class table tells you to replace a power ... that doesn’t count as retraining..."

Which sort of implies that any other means of trading powers, such as multiclass feats and paragon multiclassing, does fall under the retraining rules except where those methods specifically contradict the more general retraining rules.

In other words, by that logic, you can't trade out class features like Lay on Hands or Ghost Sound because Retraining specifically excludes them, and you have to replace powers with powers of the same level and type, which makes it essentially impossible to replace Basic Attacks, QED*.


* QED means "which I was attempting to show", not "you can't argue with this".

 

[Benly]

So, can anyone who opposed this so vehemently humour me and be so kind as to enlighten me about why this might be such a bad idea, or how it would break the game?

I think that allowing the retraining-out of Basic Attacks does have the potential to break the game (in a "doesn't work" sense, not in a "OMG TOO GOOD" sense) in that the rules are written and continue to be written with the assumption that all characters have both basic-attack powers. Personally I think this is best addressed by reworking the definition of basic attacks, however; if you just block off paragon multiclass at-will retraining from them, you still have the problem of (for example) a monster who can as an immediate interrupt remove a PC's access to a power he is attempting to use for the duration of the encounter. (Should he be able to remove basic attacks? Should he not be able to? Unclear and therefore problematic.)

There are three other ambiguities raised by the language of paragon multiclass at-will retraining which I believe are worth looking into and deciding how and whether to fix.

1: Divine Challenge.
2: Cantrips.
3: At-will utilities.

A fighter (particularly a human fighter) retraining out one of his at-wills for Divine Challenge gets a good deal, but I do not think it is necessarily broken; paragon multiclassing for Thunderwave would get him even more of a marks-per-round advantage and is not outside the clearly-established bounds of the "acceptable".

Similarly, I think a character who trades one of his utility slots for an extra at-will or one of his at-will attacks for an at-will utility is not inherently getting an excessively good or bad deal. Given that, and given that it is within the bounds of existing RAW, I think it's fine.

The biggest problem for me of the three is cantrips and paragon retraining, not because getting an extra at-will power for your paragon multiclass is too strong but rather because only wizards get a "something for nothing" deal on it.

 

[DracoSuave]

You can't get rid of your basic attacks. Simply put, you have them whether you want them or not. They are not optional. The option to not have them does not exist to you, and therefore if you try to get rid of them, the game says 'No, you have to have these' which prevents it from being replaced.

All characters have them. Period. No ability or game rule explicitly or implicitly permits you or any creature in the game to not have the basic attack powers. No ability permits you or any creature in the game to replace the choice to have basic attack powers with a different choice. Even if you never use them, all characters have them.

If they were replaceable, then an -exception- would be explicitly written down to note exactly how. Just as specific exceptions can break a general rule, the lack of specific exceptions means the general rule must apply.

The argument 'but the rules don't explicitly say I can't' is an argument based on a completely different design philosophy than the 4e one.

 

[Lord Sessadore]

I found an awesome loophole! On page 242 it says "Add oregano to taste!" It doesn't say how much oregano, or what sort of taste! You can add as much oregano as you want! I'm going to make my friends eat infinite oregano and they'll have to do it because the recipe says so!

For the context of this quote, see my sig. It's funny!

And I completely agree with Branduil's interpretation - this looks like a willful attempt to find strange loopholes in the rules in order to exploit them.

 

[DracoSuave]

....this looks like a willful attempt to invent strange loopholes in the rules in order to exploit them.

Altered for greater accuracy/accusation

 

[Runestar]

Except as pointed out earlier, there really isn't anything which can be exploited here....

Still, for the sake of completeness, I am interested in finding out the exact rammifications of it being allowed. This way, if the same question ever gets posted again in future, a summary list of all the relevant pros and cons can be provided, and the poster can then make his own informed decision about whether he wants to allow it or not by weighing the perceived advantages against the pitfalls.

I am not saying that common sense should not be used to arrive at a particular ruling, I just feel that it should not necessarily be the only deciding factor.

So far, we have 3 cons (it sounds/is dumb, opens potential floodgate, may make game unplayable) and one pro (paragon multiclassing sucks a little less). Any more to add to the list?