Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 4042544" data-attributes="member: 3146">I'm not sure how true this is unless you construe the one or two tricks very broadly. Of the characters that I play or play with regularly, this doesn't seem to be the case with many of them. Starting from the top:My highest level character: Fighter 1/Wizard 6/Spellsword 1/Eldritch Knight 10.Lots of tricks there. Arcane strike and attack normally. Arcane strike, whirling blade, follow up with quickened whirling blade. Empowered, normal, and quickened melf's unicorn arrow. Empowered Lucent Lance. Defensively, improved blink, elemental body, iron body, moment of prescience, greater mirror image, empowered mass fire shield, fires of purity. If it comes up, enlarge person plus improved trip with a guisarme and combat reflexes.My next highest level character: Rogue 1/Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 4/Shadowbane Stalker 8.Plenty of tricks there too. The usual buff and bash cleric stuff (divine power--quickened or normal, righteous might, quickened divine favor, precast greater magic weapon, magic vestment, etc) sneak attack, as well as the combat focus chain of feats--combat focus, combat awareness, combat healing, destruction, firestorm, flamestrike, slay living, defensively, energy immunity, fortunate fate, life's grace, mass death ward, holy aura. Next highest level character: Cleric 8/Radiant Servant of Pelor 7Again, lots of tricks. He can fight well enough using his spells and powers. He can buff the party very effectively (domain spontanaity: strength means that he can turn all his unused spell slots into magic vestment at the end of the day so everyone in the party gets magic vestment). Plenty of offensive magic tricks too--sunburst, sunbeam, Pelor's Clenched fist, Pelor's grasping hand, fire shield, bolt of glory, and sudden empower.Next highest level character: Fighter 4/Scout 9/Nightsong Enforcer 1I'll admit this character doesn't have a lot of tricks. He's good at finding and disabling traps. He can hide and move silently adequately. In combat, he pretty much always spring attacks, discovers that what he's hitting is immune to his sneak attack and skirmish damage, Power Attacks, and then moves away. Every now and then, elusive target figures in. Every now and then camouflage or flawless stride figures in. But mostly, he just moves, hits things (fortunately, he gets the bulk of his damage from strength, melee weapon mastery, power attack, and his greatsword so the fact that only one monster in ten in the age of worms is vulnerable to sneak attack/skirmish doesn't neuter him completely), deals damage, and moves away.That said, the party could really be considered an experiment in 4th edition combat roles since we have my character (striker), an archer (striker), a fighter/knight/dwarven defender (defender), a wizard/mage of the arcane order (controller?), and a favored soul (leader is the 4e terminology here I guess) and all of our roles are pretty undiluted. (Unlike the other characters I describe here, most of whom could switch between two or three of the 4th edition roles from round to round without any special preparation). Next highest level character: halfling Monk 2/Fighter 2/Cleric 2/Paladin 3/Pious Templar 4No particularly effective magic tricks since she doesn't have access to any particularly useful spells. The best she can do is cast bless weapon on her unarmed strike--just in case she needs it. However, she has plenty of class, feat and item based tricks. Smite Evil, divine might, power attack, combat reflexes, close quarters fighting (which actually enables her to resist grapples pretty well these days--last mod, several things tried to grab her and she managed grapple checks of 56 and 61 respectively), dodge, mobility, elusive target, counterstrike bracers, ring of thunderclaps, etc. Not to mention, evasion, mettle and saves which are better than my 18th level character in every category. And, if she needs to, the nobility domain gives her the ability to buff her party members too. (Yes, for the record, this was my attempt to see how I could use the multiclassing rules to create a heinously broken character and then--so as not to hog too much of the spotlight--to see if all that heinous multiclassing could make a halfling melee fighter without sneak attack viable.)Cleric 4/Church Inquisitor 6.Quite a few tricks here too (as might be expected for a spellcaster). Domain spontainaity glory (in combination with greater spell penetration) lets him cast holy smite while still being lawful neutral and lets him do it often enough that he can fill the role of an offensive spellcaster (between that, flame strikes, plane shift, etc). Augment healing makes him an effective healer, and holy sword can even make the 98lb weakling into a semi-credible melee threat (who could at least conceivably kill something in melee without spending the entire fight buffing).Fighter 4/Barbarian 2/Hexblade 2/Occult Slayer 1I'll confess that this character's trick is mainly hitting things and killing them without getting killed himself. He's pretty good at that trick though. Main options: Power Attack, Cleave. Other options: Hexblade's curse (someone may fail the DC 11 some day), rage, ditch the shield and switch to wielding his bastard sword 2 handed.Then again, he's designed to be a more ordinary character and wouldn't even have the hexblade and occult slayer levels if the party's cleric of Pelor hadn't betrayed him in Red Hand of Doom. I will say though that he's never really felt behind the power curve except when I brought him into Red Hand of Doom as a 4th level character.Fighter 5At the moment, he has three tricks. He can bull-rush things. He can charge them and hit them with his shield and knock them prone. And he can power attack. He's not likely to reach 13th level or so either but if he did, he would have quite a few tricks up his sleeve (other than simply hitting things and dealing lots of damage). Three Mountain Style, Shield Charge, Shield Slam, Improved Bull Rush, Shock Trooper, and Combat Brute all have very nice potential--either together or separately.Marshal 2/Hexblade 2/Fighter 1At the moment, he has a few tricks. Hexblade's curse is occasionally useful (DC 14 at level 5 is much better than DC 11 at level 9 and the character has tricks to make it harder). Power Attack and Cleave are the obvious tricks for any melee character who's not a rogue. Blindfight is kinda nice. Intimidating Strike has some very nice synergy with a decent armor class as well as with the hexblade's curse (when you're shaken, DC 14 is harder to make) and can serve to set up bad guys for the party casters' spells. (In one mod, the party cleric hit the main bad guy with doom; my hexblade followed up with intimidating strike and the hexblade's curse. At -6 to attack and saves, he wasn't much of a threat anymore). By level 13 (if he ever gets there) the character will have quite a few more tricks--grant move action, auras to boost saving throws and increase speed as well as to boost attacks and damage, and the ability to use wands of hexblade spells. (The wand of false life that he has right now is pretty nice).All of the successful characters I've seen or played with (except maybe a few archers--most of whom had one very good trick: shoot things with their bow and deal lots of damage) have had a lot more than one trick up their sleeve and have not exactly been focused "like a laser beam" on those one tricks either. Now, most of them can get a lot of their tricks working together at the same time and when and if that happens, they really tear through things, but when they can only leverage a few of their tricks or have to fall back on the "not quite focused but perfectly adequate" areas of their expertise they work well too. (One trick pony characters tend to actually work best at low levels when there are fewer immunities, by level 9 or so, they will start running into things that are immune to their trick (or better at it than they are) and it stops working). WotC supplements introducing hideously overpowered material (divine metamagic, Rhino's Rush, illusionary pit (Complete Arcane version), etc) can lead to balance problems, but there is no reason that a DM has to allow them into his campaign. And there is no reason to believe that 4th edition will be any better in that regard. (When the designers are explicitly denouncing the 3.x design goal of "balance" you might take that as an indication that things will get worse in that regard rather than better).</blockquote>

Verification