D&D 4E Rich Baker on his 4e Warlord

[hong]

It doesn't matter if everyone has it or not.

You can have a party of all Paladins and Monks, all with MAD, and they're still going to be ineffective against whatever they come up against.

Ineffective compared to who?

This argument is like saying that a 3E fighter could so pwn a 1E giant's ass.

 

[Aage]

It doesn't matter if everyone has it or not.

You can have a party of all Paladins and Monks, all with MAD, and they're still going to be ineffective against whatever they come up against.

"Everyone Sucks Equally" does not sound like a winning argument to me.

But if monster also "suck equally", there would be no problem, would there? It would just a power-down from the previous edition you could say.. (Not saying I want this, but the point is valid)

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

You can have a party of all Paladins and Monks, all with MAD, and they're still going to be ineffective against whatever they come up against.

Not if the game is balanced around the assumption that everyone will have a lot of abilities that are middle of the road, and not perfectly min/maxed.

Heck, most DMs seem to be able to swing this with individual encounters -- I can't imagine it wouldn't occur to any designer worth a steady paycheck.

 

[Rechan]

Ineffective compared to who?

Is that the extent of your argument?

 

[Azgulor]

What struck me as interesting was...

"He’s a competent healer, like any leader, but I’ve chosen mostly offensive powers"

Which to me indicates that all leader role characters in the PHB and future PHBs will have healing built in, so even if you decide to focus on some other area with your power choices, you can still fill the basic roles of the class.

That struck me as well. For my own education, when did Leader equate to Healer? I don't get this at all.

 

[hong]

I really don't care if you care that I care. You don't have to agree with me. I don't come to the internet to convince others.

Well, glad we cleared that up.

Except that neither are class dependent. Apples and orangutans.

For practical purposes, many feats are class dependent, or at least strongly correlated to class. Certainly this applies to things like divine and metamagic feats. And besides: opportunity cost. I can take divine feat X and power up one aspect of my class, or I can take divine feat Y and power up another aspect. I did mention opportunity cost before.

How many times are you going to ask that question before you make a point? I'm tired of answering it for you to dance around in circles and giggle gleefully.

I have made a point. Many times. Just because you refuse to acknowledge it isn't my problem.

 

[Rechan]

Not if the game is balanced around the assumption that everyone will have a lot of abilities that are middle of the road, and not perfectly min/maxed.

I just don't see that happening.

That's like saying "Yay everybody gets to be the 3e Bard".

And I highly doubt 4e will be Min/max proof.

 

[Whizbang Dustyboots]

That struck me as well. For my own education, when did Leader equate to Healer? I don't get this at all.

I think it's them trying to sell "healer" as a category to people who don't want to just be the medic. (See any multiplayer videogame for the problems in getting many people to take on that role.)

 

[Gloombunny]

Subpar relative to what?

Just subpar.

From this I can only conclude that Rechan does not, in fact, know what "subpar" means.

 

[Scholar & Brutalman]

Rechan, I don't think Hong is the only one having trouble following your point here. If all the PC classes have to spread out their points across multiple abilities, then the standard encounter in 4e will be based around that idea. The problem with MAD is 3e is that some classes have to do it while some don't, and the difficulty of a CR is based on the non-MAD classes rather than the MAD ones.