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

[Garthanos]

He has been errataed.
)

I found there to be some flavor lost in that errata... though it was necessary. A bit of adjustment gives me even more flavor.

Empathic Vigor - "Do not harm my friends" <- even more defendery
Pain Rage Vigor - "Danger is what I live for" or "You wouldnt like me when I'm angry"
Enraged Retaliation - "how dare you strike me"
Frustrated Indignation. - "I will not be denied"

 

[Turtlejay]

Good to see you haven't really messed around with Hybrids yet. As much as folks are saying there are no 'broken' classes in 4e, it is much, much easier to gimp yourself if you make a hybrid. My mistake was thinking that I *needed* it to make the concept, when really I didn't. Good hybrids exist for two reasons (IMO, of course)

1 - To capture a character concept: You really want that oddball magic user that has a mix of divine and arcane powers? Hybrids work for concepts that come pre-made, from other editions of literature or what have you. Not all the time, certainly, but often.

2 - To take advantage of some nice synergies: Paladin/Sorcerer for example, has some cool uses, and the rules interact in a way to create a very unique character.

In both cases, though, it is far to easy to make a stinker. Approach with caution.

Jay

 

[Haltherrion]

Good to see you haven't really messed around with Hybrids yet.

...

In both cases, though, it is far to easy to make a stinker. Approach with caution.

Jay

Hybrids will definitely be left for a later campaign. Not like PHB and PHB2 don't provide plenty of choices already

 

[Garthanos]

Good to see you haven't really messed around with Hybrids yet. As much as folks are saying there are no 'broken' classes in 4e, it is much, much easier to gimp yourself if you make a hybrid. My mistake was thinking that I *needed* it to make the concept, when really I didn't. Good hybrids exist for two reasons (IMO, of course)

1 - To capture a character concept: You really want that oddball magic user that has a mix of divine and arcane powers? Hybrids work for concepts that come pre-made, from other editions of literature or what have you. Not all the time, certainly, but often.

2 - To take advantage of some nice synergies: Paladin/Sorcerer for example, has some cool uses, and the rules interact in a way to create a very unique character.

In both cases, though, it is far to easy to make a stinker. Approach with caution.

Jay

Hybrids certainly can work and they come with a warning label ;-) but you know ... some of them do rock. Sorceror/Barbarian is also interesting.

You might find yourself more obliged to play the CharOp game with hybrids.

My players like characters with really diversely competent characters even though the game uber-rewards specialization.

If nobody at the table builds a character too optimized even a bit gimpy is fine if you are invoking a character you have empathy with, basically need to follow the path of group.

 

[Haltherrion]

We finished our 4th and final test session. For this one we had a wizard, fighter, cleric, bard and avenger. The cleric was completely a heal build (think the player would back off from that if he went with cleric in the campaign). The wizard was built more for dps.

Anyway, people did find the cleric and fighter quite powerful and the rest of the classes played, interesting. Bard was probably deemed least interesting but that class, I think, has to appeal to someone's aesthetic sense which it does to me and I may yet play one.

Only class we didn't try was druid; we just didn't get to that one, although there was some interesting discussion on the swarm build. Think most acknowledged the potency of the build but didn't want to play a character that turned into a bunch of bugs

Had a good time mulling over our experiences post game. The group does agree with the general concensus here that all the classes seem playable although individuals do have their favorites.

Thanks for the feedback on this.