There is some beautiful irony in your post UngeheuerLich as this "Armchair ranter" can show you something really funny, that actually happened in an actual game (which actually demolishes any point you may have had while - ironically - armchair ranting yourself
).
UngeheuerLich said:
Having powers like shadeform that makes you take half damage for a round also does not count when you have 2 + level less hp than the average striker... especially when taking into account that you also gain vulnerable radiant to add insult to injury...
The irony here is that in my own ACTUAL game, the radiant vulnerability is what
killed the oassassin. The extra radiant vulnerability effectively negated the benefit of shade form and ensured the oAssassin's death. Without the vulnerability, he would have lived pretty easily but because of it, well - I don't have an oAssassin in the game now
.
Speaking of spike damage, the new barbarian the player has does extremely high damage round/round, way outdoing his assassin easily. While having more surges, more HP and more resilience in general. In short: Working infinitely better than a poor, glass cannon striker that couldn't even out damage the paladin. The Barbarian, without needing a single round of building any shrouds that will potentially be wasted - on a crit - almost wipes out an elite of his own level.
As for the vampire, I've been playtesting various encounters with a vampire since all the core "stuff" has been released. There isn't any mystery to what it does anymore for me, because what I've seen in game is that the vampire is
immensely swingy. Thus far the vampire is basically required to take durable, or be at risk of a single poor skill challenge from a new character sheet. In fairness after some playtesting, the vampire with durable is really solid. You'll have bad encounters, but you'll have good encounters as well and the net effect is that you can keep up. 4 surges is a pretty big buffer and not even I strip that many surges regularly off one character (except in the most amazingly unlucky circumstances).
So in general the Vampire as "designed" with 2 surges is useless. With durable and later once they get the bonus surge from the PP it looks solid. Damage is underwhelming, due to not having the same tricks, out of turn attack opportunities and similar things that other classes have. At the same time, the Vampire isn't entirely useless despite the low damage (possibly lower than an Oassassin) simply because of two things:
1) Some of the powers are actually really solid control powers. With a good 18/18 starting Dex/Cha (which they do in fairness really need) the cha+2 dominate power is just great. As are some of their other powers/utilities, plus most of their powers have some control effect and they get a few bursts/blasts.
2) With some extra surges to burn - I can't emphasize my amazement that
durable makes or breaks an entire class - they can make consistent use of their burn surge mechanics. Getting another entire attack, or just being able to throw on another 2d8 is actually pretty solid.
Where of course vampires can fall apart are adventures that are trap and skill challenge heavy. Normal parties face these pretty fine, but there is a distinct design difference between these encounters and combat encounters to a vampire. If the vampire faces a few encounters in a row without combat, say traps or skill challenges (that drain surges) they can rapidly run into trouble. But again, this is where I emphasize that durable is so important. Any fragile striker (like a rogue for example) who loses 4 surges to traps/skill challenges isn't going to be a lot better off than a vampire either.
WalterKovacs said:
And while everyone has been comparing the vampire to the Ossassin ... I actually play an Ossassin and while he's got a glass jaw (with our controller being a druid, I'm the one with the lowest hp), my damage spike at the start of the encounter is unmatched.
It definitely sounds like it to me. What is your build? Because my experience with paragon+ Oassassins is they are practically useless. While I have found that Rogues simply become amazing and Rangers are practically on auto. Unless both of those characters have made absolutely terrible decisions, I can't see how the Oassassin could outdamage them. Unless you're heavily charopped and they are not - which I wouldn't be surprised if that was the case.
Reviewed its abilities, or seen the class in play? I don't put much stock in armchair-quarterback analysis of classes in 4E.
I've done both. Without durable it plays exactly like I said it would play (Horribly). In certain scenarios it's a short trip to a new character sheet, depending on the old encounters I tried as I have been DMing 4E for nearly 3 years, so I have a good chunk of encounters that were successful with real players that I use for playtesting new builds. One of them I tried was of particular interest to points I made about the vampire, the Temple of Dagon. This is one of my earlier 4E adventures, which starts with a ship being attacked by Sahuagin and then a Kraken (Hazard/Trap statted) who sinks the ship, then being sucked down into the temple itself while fending off the Sahuagin underwater (Skill challenge - there was no way 4Es combat rules could make that encounter survivable, so I came up with a skill challenge to represent the vortex + fending off sahuagin/sharks) and then being sucked into the temple itself - where the room shuts and promptly begins flooding (a trap, with bonus lightning!). So that is a combat encounter that gets cut short, because the ship sinks followed by a skill challenge and then a trap. Without durable, a vampire that had an off day in encounter 1 was doomed by the trap. You know, basically exactly what I claimed would happen ages back in the thread without playing the class. It didn't take extensive playtesting to figure out what nearly 3 years of running 3+ games of DnD at a time usually have taught me about how the game works. With durable, I sometimes managed to get all of his surges but the "soft" EL-2 encounter once they escape the trap after the very hardcore "start" to that adventuring day, nearly always got the vampire back on his feet and adventuring again pretty quickly.
So really, when I account for the fact durable is an amazing feat for vampires and I cannot stop emphasizing just how good it is - many of their problems aren't so bad. Is the vampire still a total trap option IMO? Yes, the vampire almost certainly is 4Es biggest trap option. Is it
relatively easy for any DM to help a PC fix? Yes it is. Advise the player to take durable and they will do a lot better automatically. If you're really kind hearted, just houserule that vampires get durable for free and get on with life.
Because IMO, after playtesting and thinking about it, the vampire is actually kind of fun. It does have its merits, but you really have to dig into the hard rock exterior for the little bits of gold it can offer.
