Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.
Rocket your D&D 5E and Level Up: Advanced 5E games into space! Alpha Star Magazine Is Launching... Right Now!

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Zinovia" data-source="post: 5109677" data-attributes="member: 57373">I don't believe that people here hate builds that are multiclass and synergistic.  They hate builds that are cheesy and overpowered.  Where you draw the line is certainly a good question and subject to interpretation.  The more specific game elements you need to combine to build a given combo, the more likely it is to be pure cheese if not outright broken.  There are so many options in the game that it is impossible to foresee all the ways in which they can be combined, so that broken combos are inevitable.  All WotC can do is errata the most commonly abused elements, as was done here. The Avenger Student of Caiphon combo requires a radiant weapon to work, because it raises the crit range only of radiant and fear powers.  You must take 1) Warlock multiclass with 2) Star pact and 3) Student of Caiphon paragon path, and 4) wield a radiant weapon.  Then you do more damage than the rest of the group combined, according to the example of this build we have seen in this thread. It's overpowered and was not working as intended.  The errata recently issued restricting its use to warlock powers fixes it.  Now you are free to multiclass warlock to your heart's content - or even go hybrid, and it won't create an unbalanced crit-fisher build that outshines the rest of the group.  That would be both boring and unnecessary.  I have a hybrid and two MC classes in my 6 person group, with another player considering multiclassing as well.  One of them multiclassed specifically to get a paragon path from another class.  It's not a problem.  It was easy to build useless characters in 3E, but you really do have to work at it in 4th.  So long as you have a decent number on your primary stat, then your character will work decently.  If you are *really* being obtuse and pick powers from the opposite half of a "V" class, then yeah, you could manage to build an underpowered character; likewise with 2 non-synergistic hybrid options.  In that case I would advise the player and help them make an effective character that comes as close to what they envisioned as possible.  In my game, the warlock is not an optimizer by nature, and was frustrated by her lack of good damage and interesting options.  I think it takes a certain amount of rules mastery to get the most out of a warlock, especially a feylock.  Because I do like to optimize (without creating broken combos) I created a hybrid sorcerer/feylock build that has her excited about her character again.  She does lay down the hurt now, but she's a striker, so that's all to the good, and just what both she and the party needed.  That's a reductio ad absurdum argument.  Banning a couple combos that seem to break all the rules as intended (rather than RAW) is a choice made by the DM for the betterment of the game as a whole.  One character that does more damage than the rest of the group combined is clearly unbalanced.  It is likely to cause envy among the other players.  It's fun to play an OP character, but not to be in a party with one.  Everyone wants their character to be good at what they do, and not be outshone entirely by one other character.  If someone in my group had wanted to build such a character, I would have talked to them about it, and asked them to not go that route.  Yes, I admire the cleverness in finding these combos, but I also see no reason to allow such a twisting of the rules as they were intended to work.  It comes at the expense of the other players in the group, who feel ineffective by comparison.  Balance is a good thing.</blockquote>

Verification