The Gaming Den

You are missing the point and I'm getting tired of repeating myself. This is not about normal gameplay. We're trying to determine if a character is a meaningful help to the party. To do so, we examine how a group would fare against the same encounter with or without him and see if there's a noticea...

[quote="Roxolan]You are missing the point and I'm getting tired of repeating myself. This is not about normal gameplay. We're trying to determine if a character is a meaningful help to the party. To do so, we examine how a group would fare against the same encounter with or without him and see...

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG. For a character to have a meaningful contribution, he must make the same encou...

If you add another character to a party of 5, then the encounters has to be adjusted so it's appropriate (in theory) for a party of 6. You're missing the point. We're not trying to make a balanced encounter, we're trying to evaluate whether a character can meaningfully contribute to a combat. Also,...

Your own definition of meaningful contribution is that every character reduces the length/risk of a combat. That is false. The more characters in an encounter, the more challenging the encounter becomes. It's in the DMG. For a character to have a meaningful contribution, he must make the same encou...

(And if you can't or don't want to make up an environment where drows, harpies and goblins work together, use the magic of reskinning to make them all drows.) Duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuude. In combat, players should make informed decisions when choosing their next action. If everything I see is co...

Read the bolded part. He said that if the party can deal with the encounter he is wondering why one would put it in. And his reasoning does make one wonder why he'd play at all, since "fighting just keeps them where they were with some bodies around them and a little less health" applies ...

Every 4E class contributes meaningfully, barring contrived scenarios. Yay for repeating myself. Experience tells me otherwise. Unless you mean that a meaningful contribution does not have to be equal or particularly useful. Not equal? Yes, that's what I've been explicitly saying for the last three ...

By "contrived scenario" I mean something like an optimized party built to abuse a loophole and stunlock all monsters or something. I'm sure the Char-Op forums at WotC have found something like that. Yeah, if you add a warlock to that party he probably won't be able to contribute meaningful...

Beyond being false, your argument is 'if you play with more players than intended, the system doesn't work!' To put it really simply, imagine you have a 4-person party. They do 20 DPR each and the DM sends out four 80-hp monsters to fight them. This means that the party will take them down in 4 rou...

Some classes aren't top notch, but even the worst ones can contribute effectively in a party. This is also not true. When you have an extended party size it also jacks up the difficulty because the DM has to add more monsters--this does not come with a consummate increase in average treasure or exp...

Remember this was written when 4e "balance" included orbizards with a -12 save penalty throwing around a Burst 5, Ongoing Damage + stun (save ends), and the cleric's Righteous Brand hadn't been nerfed, and none of these had been changed after SEVERAL "patches". When BaneGuard wa...

Let's not forget it's a Con VS Will Weapon attack. Whether or not this means anything depends on how you envision the attack working. If he's poking something in the eyes than logic says it would go against Reflex but if he's using shadows to do some kind of mystical hubba bubba to your sight than ...

And it and the other Minor Encounter combine to give the Bane Guard a shitload of options for each action as early as level 1. If you think more options is never a bad thing, you've never played 4E epic. And this is a level 1 power, when newbies are still trying to figure out this "round" ...

How about a challenge to you. Point out how the BaneGuard is worse than 50% of the classes in the PHB1. That would be cheating, it'd just make your challenge easier. But here, I'll give you a hint: Simple Trick Bane Guard Attack 1 It's not complicated, but it hurts like hell. Usage::Encounter &...

I'm certainly not following your train of thought here. The Bane Guard is far from being the worse 4E class I've read (far from it) and (skipping over fluff I don't care about) seems to be pretty much par for the course for 4E. What I really am having a hard time hurdling over is that you criticize...

Certainly it's not the most amazing character class ever....but what one guy can do in a short amount of time *shouldn't* match what the WoTC team can do. But it, you know, doesn't. Granted, there are some glaring problems, but nothing that can't be fixed in a few penstrokes. You'd literally have t...

Yeah and that tops out at 30 STR, which means that at level 28 a +2 STR bonus race that picked an ED that gave +2 to strength can deadlift 600 lbs.. Or without magical aid or some obscure racial ability/feat, they can get a maximum +25 bonus to strength checks at level 30. Then they have a 50/50 ch...

Great. More 4rries. edit: Basically it's a mess of a class that veers wildly back and forth between being overpowered (a late-game Daily that flat-out kills an opponent) and being complete shit (having three different primary stats) None of that is remotely true. It has three available builds that ...

I'd argue that 4e went for both answers 4 and 5. We don't have the explicitly enormous earthquakes or whirlwinds, but they can do things that can't be explained by just physical might... the grappling fighter, for example, can just juggle monsters dozens of times larger than him, no problem. No. He...