D&D 4E When will 4E break?

[Lonely Tylenol]

As soon as some 13 year old with no life reads the books and makes Pun-Pun Jr...

Now, to be fair, it took a lot of supplements before Pun-pun became possible. And it wouldn't be possible without that one weirdo race in (I think) Lost Empires of Faerun.

Nobody has made a Pun-pun analogue using just the core books. You need a few years of hastily produced and largely unedited supplements under an ever-changing population of designers, developers, and editors before you can really break a game properly.

 

[ZappoHisbane]

Now I can't find the source, but I know somewhere one of the designers stated that they didn't want skill uses such as Tumble being used to avoid AoOs (now OAs I suppose) as a static DC available to everyone (since Tumble can be used untrained).

Tumble is Trained Only in 3.5.

 

[Remathilis]

Now, to be fair, it took a lot of supplements before Pun-pun became possible. And it wouldn't be possible without that one weirdo race in (I think) Lost Empires of Faerun.

Nobody has made a Pun-pun analogue using just the core books. You need a few years of hastily produced and largely unedited supplements under an ever-changing population of designers, developers, and editors before you can really break a game properly.

True, but I didn't put a time line on how long it would take the 13 year old to find the books needed to build Pun Pun, now did I?

 

[Imban]

Place your bets. When do you think will the first minmaxer "break" the 4th Edition?

Some forms of breaking (in my opinion)
- Makes a character which can solo equal level paragon group encounters

Hmm. If you mean on a regular basis, not necessarily ever. (I mean, specific characters soloing specific encounters is pretty likely - flying archer vs. ground-bound dire lions or whatnot.) However, it'll most likely start kicking in once splatbook options really get broad.

- Makes characters which avoid being healed beyond the bloodied condition

This will definitely happen on occasion if splatbook options that give you more power when bloodied become widespread, but I don't see this as broken - it's a legitimate tactical choice to remain below 50% of your HP in order to do more damage or whatnot, the tradeoff being that you are below 50% of your HP.

- Someone find a killer tactic which works against most enemies (think Harm)

As soon as they print one. It's pretty inevitable unless they very, very strictly control the types of effects allowable within the rules.

- Someone can prove that one base class is much more powerful than all others

Some people will have good ideas within weeks to months of release, but these ideas won't be "proven" - by which I mean accepted by a good deal of CharOp types (I mean, heck, the community at large still doesn't think spellcasters being more powerful than straight fighters is proven) - until about a year after release.

Will it only be some hours after the books are released? Days? Months? Will it require a splatbook?
And don't forget, this is first and foremost a humor thread.

Hours to days after people get the books, some people will have ideas of what they think is broken, or at least most effective at killing stuff. Weeks to months later, some of these ideas will look stupid, and some of them will start panning out. Months to a year later, there will be some general agreement on how one makes a broken, or at least very combat-optimized character.

 

[JohnSnow]

Now I can't find the source, but I know somewhere one of the designers stated that they didn't want skill uses such as Tumble being used to avoid AoOs (now OAs I suppose) as a static DC available to everyone (since Tumble can be used untrained). He/They said skill uses such as those would be unlocked through feats/powers or removed entirely.

So maybe the disappointment won't be so big after all.

You mean like this comment from Wizards Presents - Races and Classes?

Another major change to skills was the removal of several skill functions that we no longer believe should be default parts of skills. The prime example is using Tumble to avoid attacks of opportunity. To have a check (one that can even be made untrained) be able to bypass such a fundamental risk of the game is just too easy and ultimately not all that much fun. Now skill functions like this are either unlocked by taking a feat or are incorporated into specific powers.

So it might be possible to use the Acrobatics skill to avoid Opportunity Attacks, but you'll probably have to possess a power or feat that unlocks that ability. My personal guess is that it'll be handled by powers available only to the skirmish combatants - Rangers and Rogues.

However, by requiring the investment of a power or a feat, it's much less of a no-brainer tactic.

 

[Desdichado]

Place your bets. When do you think will the first minmaxer "break" the 4th Edition?

The first time a DM tries to design a dragon's lair?

 

[The Little Raven]

The first time a DM tries to design a dragon's lair?

Y'know, it's pretty dangerous to poke a badger with a stick.

 

[Desdichado]

Y'know, it's pretty dangerous to poke a badger with a stick.

Nah, I'm a paragon level Internet warrior. I can handle badgers.

 

[Imban]

The first time a DM tries to design a dragon's lair?

It's a cave. It has a dragon in it, sleeping on a huge pile of treasure. If you go inside, you may kill the dragon, or the dragon may eat you.

You can complain about monsters losing the abilities that let them actually do what the fluff says they're supposed to do all you want, and if fluff and stats don't match up it's indeed highly lame, but seriously what?

 

[Crashy75]

You mean like this comment from Wizards Presents - Races and Classes?



So it might be possible to use the Acrobatics skill to avoid Opportunity Attacks, but you'll probably have to possess a power or feat that unlocks that ability. My personal guess is that it'll be handled by powers available only to the skirmish combatants - Rangers and Rogues.

However, by requiring the investment of a power or a feat, it's much less of a no-brainer tactic.

A feat to avoid an AoO could easly be a no-brainer if most defenders depend on AoO's.

It is possible that even with a feat the roll will be opposed (perhaps by initiative).