D&D 4E Your thoughts on the 4E bard and other classes?

[Haltherrion]

I'm very impressed that your group is waiting for the miniatures and testing things out before you even start the campaign. It seems like they put a lot of emphasis on flavor and the campaign world in general, and all DMs could use a few more players like that.

Your group seems to be interested in building optimal characters as well. I believe the general consensus is that Fighters and Rangers make about the best defenders and strikers respectively. All the controllers and leaders are playable, though I think invoker and shaman take the cake in a popularity contest.

I wonder why you ask about bards in particular. I think they have moved from being underpowered in previous editions to being able to hold their own pretty well in 4e. They have an array of abilities that give +x to hit and -x to hit. These powers are much better than they were in 3.5 because balance is much tighter this edition and little attack modifiers make a big difference.

Good luck!

Thanks

On the testing it out- probably too many engineers in the group. It's how we approach things. But you have touched on the group nature well- we like the "color" aspects of a setting and the figures (most of us will be swayed in our final choice simply by the figure asthetics as much as race and class). We're very fortunate to have a top notch painter in the group as well.

On the bard, I have a personal interest in it more for "color" reasons. I like the jack-of-all-trades concept and have always been intrigued by the bard but in past systems couldn't bring myself to play such a weak character. Plus, for this campaign, I've done the world development. There will be myself and one other ref trading off ref duties but a bard seems appropriate to me as a "keeper of knowledge". Would explain in-game my knowledge of the world. And the setting is very conducive to bards (has aspects of a norse/germanic beowulf era setting).

 

[Haltherrion]

I'm shocked the warlord didn't wow anyone!

They looked very attractive on a read of the rules. In play they haven't excelled yet but again, one session is hard to base a decision on and the player who ran him hadn't spent as much time on the 4E system.

Frankly, it's the reason why I started this post: to calibrate our own experiences with those more seasoned with 4E. It's not that we aren't season D&D players, some of us have been playing since '78 but we are new to 4E and 4E is a much bigger break with previous systems.

Anyway, glad to hear he does stand out in general; does seem an interesting class.

 

[Aduro]

I hear you on the color and fig aspect. Big part for me was finding good figs and portraits to go with them. I was very pleased to find the Pathfinder Iconic characters artwork, and then Reaper figs made to match that artwork. My fighter will be human, despite I can't really decide on a third at-will that really suits me, because the look of the fig/art is just Too cool. I photoshopped horns and a tail on the art for the human sorcerer, and will use green stuff to put them on the fig, and will use that for my Tiefling Warlock. Already lined up a guy I know to paint them for me, he's pretty top notch and much better than myself at it.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Overall I think what you'll find in the end is that the 4e classes are SO well balanced that there is no real danger of picking one up and finding it to be underpowered at all. Its possible to build a somewhat anemic character if you really try, but not all that easy and the most basic aspects of optimization are intended to be pretty obvious, so you aren't likely to accidentally build something that isn't reasonably good.

So really choose based on color and party overall composition and don't worry about someone ending up with the 'lemon' class. Worst case you can allow a refresh in a couple levels for people to switch class features and tweak things around. Its a good practice to follow when playing something new. Beyond that chances are standard retraining will take care of any 'oops I don't like this power' kinds of things.

Once you've played a bit you'll also find that there are plenty of little rules you can safely bend for the sake of getting the character you want. 4e tends not to have arbitrary restrictions like "magic users can't use swords" but like any system there are limitations in there that don't make sense for every group or seem to be pretty much just limitations on the designers vision (like swordmages can only use swords, no real mechanical reason for that at all that anyone has found).

 

[Ryujin]

I must say that I am really impressed by the balancing done in 4e. I like the following classes after seeing them in play: Fighter, Warlord, Cleric, Bard, Sorcerer, Wizard, Ranger, Rogue, Barbarian, Paladin, Invoker.

I haven't seen the Shaman in played and it doesn't look like my cup of tea. I disliked the first incarnation of the Druid, but it might be fixed now. I am undecided about the Avenger after seeing him in play, he sure isn't a high damage striker, but he has a lot of control and single-tank aspects and to him.

I think 4e has done a really good job and there is surprisingly low amounts of cheese available with unbelievable amount of good builds available.

Regarding the bard: being able to move allies out of flanking positions and giving loads of temp hp makes them very good healers. Their at-will powers are really really good. Effectively giving the WHOLE party a +2 bonus to hit a single enemy with an at-will is awesome.

One note regarding the Fighter, I have a Dwarf Battlevigor Fighter in my current group and he is SO hard to take down. He generates ridicules amounts of temp hp and with the level 7 encounter power come and get it/get over here, or whatever it's called he has great control as well. He can switch from a 100% defensive at-will to 100% offensive at-will making no choice "good" against him.

So in short: I think you will find all classes very playable and I am impressed about how little power creep there has been. Overpowered powers have been errataed and new feats and powers added to support weak builds or classes.

Sounds like your Battlerager may not have incorporated the nerfs to his temp hit point abilities. Before the rewrites our Goliath Battlerager had many combats in which he would barely be touched. Afterwards he actually needed to spend the odd surge.

The next character that I'll be playing in 4e will likely be a Valorous or Prescient Bard. The buffing, mobility, and healing looks quite good. I've been getting some inspiration while playing Pathfinder.

 

[BobTheNob]

This is funny. Our group had our cleric leader leave, so we brought in a Bard replacement (NPC. Effectively DM run). After two levels, the party has decided they hate the character and it has been run out of the party to be replaced with an Eladrin Warlord (who gets first play tonight).

The bard did really struggle to make a solid contribution. It was a valorous bard, and Im guessing there must have been more optimal configurations that can be put forward, but if I ever mention the word "Bard" to the party again, I just know the reaction I will get...

 

[2020]

With the plethora of options available through the Character Builder, every class can shine through the rules alone. But what really brings a character to life is how they're played.

If you're relying on rules to bring 'colour' to your game, then you're going to be disappointed no matter what class you play or system you use. Using the exact same character, a player can have a blast playing it, or can be bored to tears.

 

[2020]

With the plethora of options available through the Character Builder, every class can shine through the rules alone. But what really brings a character to life is how they're played.

If you're relying on rules to bring 'colour' to your game, then you're going to be disappointed no matter what class you play or system you use. Using the exact same character, a player can have a blast playing it, or can be bored to tears.

So what I would suggest is try to focus a bit more on the story of the character and less on the rules. The warlock, for instance, is considered one of the best 'flavour' classes, and yet really, the only thing it has is extra fluff. You could add that to any class or character.

 

[Haltherrion]

Overall I think what you'll find in the end is that the 4e classes are SO well balanced that there is no real danger of picking one up and finding it to be underpowered at all.
...
So really choose based on color and party overall composition and don't worry about someone ending up with the 'lemon' class.

Thanks, Abdul. I think you can see that we do have a healthy interest in color and world setting but there is a lurking fear, being new to the system, that one could end up with a lemon. Plus, having arranged the test runs, I was a little concerned that our group was reading too much into their first impressions so everyone's thoughts here, including Turtle's nice run down of all the classes, have been quite useful.

My personal impression is that 4E has done a nice job of balancing the classes to the point where I'd seriously consider races and classes that previously had little appeal to me, including half-orcs and gnomes which have never previously had any appeal. Alas, our painter isn't much for half-orcs and gnomes so we won't have any of those in our figure offering.

One thing we do which may also help is that players will actually choose two characters in our draft process and will be able to switch between the two so in addition to having a back-up should their prime character meet with an untimely end, they can switch to the other character if they find they can't stand the first one.

 

[Blackbrrd]

Sounds like your Battlerager may not have incorporated the nerfs to his temp hit point abilities. Before the rewrites our Goliath Battlerager had many combats in which he would barely be touched. Afterwards he actually needed to spend the odd surge.

The next character that I'll be playing in 4e will likely be a Valorous or Prescient Bard. The buffing, mobility, and healing looks quite good. I've been getting some inspiration while playing Pathfinder.

He has been errataed.

He is of course worse of than he was, but with second wind as a minor action, generating lots of temp hp, having an armor that grants a daily healing surge use and a bard that heals really well and shifts him out of flanking etc, he kicks ass.

He can be taken down - but it generally takes so long that the rest of the party takes everything down. He is also very good at shaping the battlefield which helps the damage from the Invoker immensely. (Invoker with Covenant of Wrath with 100% damage dealing powers that only targets enemies just LOVE having enemies clumped up around the dwarf.)