D&D 4E When will 4E break?

[Lanefan]

My bet is the first big "break" will come from someone finding a way to abuse per-encounter rules. This will happen mere days after release, with errata and nerfing fast to follow.

The next "break" will come unintentionally, when people try playing parties of 10-15 PCs instead of 4-6 and the ability synergies get completely out of hand (see someone's earlier example of a Fighter-Paladin front line, then multiply by 2 or 3 and chuck in *all* the classes...). This may prove unfixable.

After that... ::shrug:: who knows?

Lanefan

 

[Desdichado]

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?

See? Huh? Huh?

Already broken and it's not even released yet.

Dragons got the shaft.

 

[The Little Raven]

Dragons got the shaft.

A problem that could have easily been avoided by allowing them to cast rope trick 3/day as a 17th-level sorcerer.

 

[A'koss]

Hopefully WotC garnered a few of those guys from the CharOp board to do nothing more than try to break the system. My guess is that if it's going to break in the core rules, it'll likely come from a multiclass combo with unforeseen synergetic abilities (eg. feat + spell from class X + power from class Y + ability from Paragon Path Z).

 

[Incenjucar]

With the "bloodied" thing, I fully expect not only masochist builds, but also masochist monsters and spells and overall tactics.

It will be wonderfully disturbing.

 

[Campbell]

I'm not too worried about bloodied specialists. The bloodied condition will be something of a double edged sword even for those characters. You are not only vulnerable due to low hit points, but also to any opponents that have special abilities that key off their opponents being bloodied. What I am concerned about is abilities that are activated when the bloodied condition is reached. I really don't want to see any cheesy back and forth tactics used in order to constantly use those trigger abilities.

 

[The Little Raven]

With the "bloodied" thing, I fully expect not only masochist builds, but also masochist monsters and spells and overall tactics.

It will be wonderfully disturbing.

Or Nelson from the Simpsons.

"You made me bleed my own blood."

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

See? Huh? Huh?

Already broken and it's not even released yet.

Dragons got the shaft.

He said, cave, not shaft!

 

[Rallek]

Before I answer this, I have a question....


How many times exactly can my party of 5 bow carrying Warlords invoke "feather me yon oaf" in any given round? Could we send 25 arrows flying by all yelling it in sequence?


I think it will be interesting to see how many same-class ability loops can be found and exploited. So while a warlord may not be the obvious choice for "strongest class ever", a group of five of them could well be in the running for "strongest party ever".


I'm not saying that this is the case, just that I think this is where we should look for the initial crop of "broken".


Still interesting to contemplate, though.

 

[Jack99]

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?

I seriously doubt he was 13 years old.