Ok, at 21, fien. What's lowest lvl to break the 4rries game?

[Judging__Eagle]

Srsly gais, eye arr want play 4rrie game.

Any advice on how to do so? The simpler the better. I know that Wizards with Cloud of Daggers is pretty pimp, but, is there anything else? Not actually break the game, but things that work really well.

[mean_liar]

Lago's crit-fisher does a fine job.

Here's a version I cooked up for an RPOL game:

...


Half-Orc


STR 18+2 = 20 16
CON 12 2
DEX 12+2 = 14 2
INT 8
WIS 12 2
CHA 10



1 Weapon Expertise (light blades), Two Weapon Defense*
2 Toughness
4 Student of Battle
6 Two-Weapon Fighting
7 RETRAIN Toughness TO Novice Power (Sunder Armor - PHB, lvl 7)
8 Acolyte Power (Guileful Switch - MP, lvl 6)
10 Weapon Focus (light blades)

SWORDMASTER

11 Two-Weapon Opening
12 Reckless Attacker
14 Light Blade Precision
16 Agile Tempest
18 Weapon Proficiency (double sword)
20 Marked Scourge

PUNISHER OF THE GODS

21 Martial Mastery
22 Ferocious Critical
24 Light Blade Mastery
26 Rending Tempest
28
30


...


You use Sunder Armor to crit on 18+, then Guileful Switch to Rain of Blows, then next round Dual Strike. Get as many attacks as you can while you can. Depending on what you have available, Action Point yourself more attacks.

When you hit 16 you regain a fighter Encounter Power on a crit, allowing you to Rain of Blows again.

When you hit 21 you regain the Action Point on a crit in addition to the Encounter Power and when you spend it you regain another Encounter Power (Sunder Armor) allowing you to do the Sunder Armor + Rain of Blows combo again, with whatever else you can sneak in (Quicksilver Stance, for instance).

Each crit starts the process again since you take another Rain of Blows.

It's not game-breaking but its strong.

There are tons of variants on this and I assume this isn't the best.

I tried to make it a Martial Archetype Epic Destiny so I wouldn't feel so cheesy but... eh. Fuck it.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

The key to a lot of power in 4e really isn't in diversity but in sameness. If you can convince your buddies to play identical builds you can have a lot of fun.

For example: Everyone plays a Wizard. You all cast 5 sleeps every battle. You will ensure that Round 2 is a mop-up every time. Going Higher levels, be a Blood Mage and use the power Blood Pulse which makes the creature take 1d6 damage for every square it moves. Multiclass into Warlock and get Harrowstorm or whatever you can dig your hands into and slide it 5+int squares! (i.e. lots of damage)

Have a Party full of Str/Wis Paladins. Everyone can use Lay on Hands a bunch of times and everyone has a bunch of Healing Surges. Go into combat not worried at all.

Have a party full of Rangers. Ping everything to death in sight while hidden.

Have a Party full of Clerics. Grab Knights of Unyeilding Valor and cast it multiple times. Suddenly all these Melee Enemies are trapped and can't move anywhere. Ping them to death or cast a Blade Barrier for kicks.

You might want to ask the CharOp board, hopefully they have lots more

[shau]

The first flying mount comes in at fifth I think. Once you get a few of those you can fly and die almost everything to death

[Just another user]

The most interesting thing here is that 4e seems to be boring even when you break it. in 3.x the game breaking combos usually are fun or at least interesting in some way(pun-pun, for example, the concept fo a kobld overgod is kinda amusing). in 4e breakng the game is mostly spamming attacks again, again and again. They made even cheating boring.

[Ravengm]

Yeah, making a party of duplicate characters is (sadly) the way to go most of the time. They have the whole song and dance about creating diverse character roles, blah blah blah, but they've really set up powers to work better if you use them in conjunction with duplicates.

[Lago PARANOIA]

On the bright side, if your party is level 16+ having a Battle Captain in your party will make whatever cheesy trick you're trying to do that much easier.

For example, four orbizards + a Battle Captain can swing way above their weight class thanks to the attack and initiative boosts the class gives. For example, at level 21 the initiative boost with the right equipment can be as high as +10. And as for attack boosts, well...

Said Battle Captain throws out a +4 bonus to attack on AP attacks, a +2 bonus to attack during the surprise and first round, another +1 to attack after he blows an AP. They can throw out one +9 bonus to attack for one wizard or one +7 bonuses to attack per round depending on what the other wizards do. And we haven't even gotten into powers yet.

So that's something, I guess.

[Roy]

The most interesting thing here is that 4e seems to be boring even when you break it. in 3.x the game breaking combos usually are fun or at least interesting in some way(pun-pun, for example, the concept fo a kobld overgod is kinda amusing). in 4e breakng the game is mostly spamming attacks again, again and again. They made even cheating boring.

Pretty much. Stuff like infinite wealth was both rather hard to get if you didn't know how to do it (meaning, it was well hidden) and as much as it raped the game it was at least interesting to think about because of all the cool magic items and hell, even stuff that didn't pertain to being a Murdering Hobo.

4.Fail is all stuff like... infinite damage, or infinite HP. Basically stuff that has existed as cheat codes in most games for a very long time.

On a different subject, the reason why sameness = win is because everyone is about the same anyways. And since there's no meaningful difference between abilities, you just want your numbers as high as possible. And the way to do that is via hyperspecialization. Typically something like one Numbers Pimp and the rest all clone army soldiers. Or something.

Those should be the new names for Battle Captain + same build spam teams. But anyways.

Would Mongols qualify, or is dumbfuck on horse an actual game breaker instead of just effective?

[zeruslord]

If I'm remembering correctly and people weren't lying to me, an archer ranger outranges everything in the game. Including the animated ballista.

[Hotpants Joe]

On a different subject, the reason why sameness = win is because everyone is about the same anyways. And since there's no meaningful difference between abilities, you just want your numbers as high as possible. And the way to do that is via hyperspecialization. Typically something like one Numbers Pimp and the rest all clone army soldiers. Or something.

That doesn't make sense. If there's no meaningful difference between abilities, then any group would = win. But a party of all clerics ends up being significantly better than mixing stuff up because of how much healing you have.

The wizard team is good because of the mass sleep gimmick. That's not sameness either. That's banking on a specific ability.

[Roy]

Someone doesn't know what hyperspecialization means.

[Frantic]

A team that focuses solely on one thing is going to face different challenges than another team would. That's common sense.

As for the thread's question, Artificers even before level 21 seem to have become the best leaders. While they might not be considered 'broken', they've become the best leader and the rest of the party will love you for it.

Would Mongols qualify, or is dumbfuck on horse an actual game breaker instead of just effective?

With the MM2 out, they blow goats actually, just look at all the creatures able to inflict daze. At the same time, the Eberron book has a feat to raise a mount's land speed by 2, so that MIGHT help counteract it.

[Roy]

But can the MOBs actually get in range to do that? Because if they can't, it doesn't matter.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Actually, what is the maximum speed that one can go while it travels with the horse. I actually don't know the rules for riding a horse.

Edit: I just looked them up on the DMG page 46-47. Apparently you only get one group of actions. So your mount could move its speed and you could attack with your stuff.

Riding Horse has a speed of 10. So if it ran during its action it'd have a speed of 12. According to this chart



That would mean that only 1 monster can be defeated this way. Now I suppose that You could alternate turns by moving only and then move+attack, but it's not as decisive.

[Roy]

Not as decisive? All that matters is that either the MOB does 0 damage to you while you do > 0 damage to it or you auto attack grind it down before it does the same to you (this latter is reserved for rare MOBs that actually shoot back).

Once you can do that, the battle is decided and while it takes more pointless rolls if done a slow way since there is absolutely nothing the MOB can do you can just call it after introducing enough obligatory grinding for it to be 4.Fail.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Indeed, it should just be pointed out that to Kite effectively in 4e you have to trade turns in which you only move. and then do a turn in which you attack. It should also be mentioned that there are some monsters on the edge such as the Oni Mage which has a reach of 2 and can fly of 8 and a ranged attack that can affect up to 12 squares away. Meaning that it can affect squares 22 away from it's starting location.

So, since a player can only move a maximum of 24 squares on a Riding Horse, it will require 6 rounds for the Player to Shoot the Oni Mage successfully.

Consequently, the Oni Mage could just do a full run away from the Mounted Archer, and the Mounted Archer could never do a move and attack in the same turn (excluding Action Points) to take down an Oni Mage as it was getting away.

[mean_liar]

Yeah, that chart doesn't take into account the fact that a Longbow has a range of 20/40. A majority of enemies can't compete with that when combined with a Speed of 10, even before DblMove + Move/Shoot.

With DblMove + Move/Shoot, there's something like 15 enemies that can provide some challenge and that's because they're generally Hero-level mobs with Longbows.

I think the "Mounted Combat is Broken" meme is stupid though. Those stock enemies out of the MM generally assume an indoor environment of Dungeons and possibly Dragons; pretending like they're the only enemies that would ever exist in 4eDnD is a pointless conclusion to make.

The critique fundamentally isn't "Mounted Combat Breaks DnD", its "the Monster Manual's stock enemies aren't designed for Mounted Combat". As far as possible critiques of 4e are concerned, that's small potatoes and generally makes its proponents out to be pedants rather than substantive critics.

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

Well let's see. Most enemies have a Speed of 6. If the Enemy and The Horse Archer started 1 square away and the enemy decided to run away, the enemy could go 16 Squares (Run+Run). The Horse Archer could go 10 Squares safely and Attack (Move+Shoot). So in 7 turns a Monster could go beyond the 40 square range for safety.

If the Horse Archer had the feat which added 5 squares to the range, then it would require 8 turns for the monster to get away.

So, maybe the best tactic for monsters is to run toward the horse archer for a couple of turns and then run away?

[virgil]

Dude...

/ignore

[Akula]

Fuck you Frantic.

[Judging__Eagle]

Holy shit, what the fuck was that for?

Seriously, what the fuck was that for?

This isn't 4chan, where that's ok, this is TGD. You've got the distinguished position of being the first person I've ever ignored on any web board, and even when Elennsar was once a regular poster here I didn't put him on ignore.

[koz]

I'm with J_E on this, Frantic - that was fucking disturbing, off-topic and generally not called for. You're on ignore, and again, even Elennsar didn't push me that far.

[Fuchs]

Ditto. Annoying pics are bad enough, but this?

[Psychic Robot]

I'd be more disturbed, but I've already seen that pic, and I've read Mai-Chan's Daily Life. (PROTIP: Don't.)

[Judging__Eagle]

My real problem is that the image had nothing to do with the thread. If it was seriously a thread called "guro scan"; then fine, you go in knowing that you're going to see what could be extremely graphic violence that could be getting someone else in the scene off.

That stuff has never fit in here before, and turning a thread NSFW all because of one post is really dumb. Putting that into a spoiler, and writing a description to not view it at work would have been the least that could have been done.