4e balance points

[Surgo]

Okay, so here's the deal. My wiki has both 3.5e stuff and a little 4e stuff. Eventually it will have more than a little 4e stuff. What I want to do as a service to the general reading population is put a little tag in the infobox that communicates, in only two words, "if you allow (this WotC thing) into your game, this should probably be fine to let into your game too". Now, I've already done this for 3.5e stuff -- I know the game decently well and put up some silly "monk/core fighter that uses spirited charge/rogue/wizard that's not being played stupid" basic categorization system that says "if your game uses this, this other thing should be okay too". This isn't like those stupid JaronK tiers that try to rate classes, it's just a basic thing that says what will probably fit into your game okay power-wise if you use some other stuff that is vaguely like it power-wise.

The problem I have is that I don't know 4e at all, and I want (need) to do it for 4e as well. So what are the highs, lows, and mids of the 4e system? They don't really have to be classes or anything, that's just the examples I used for 3.5.

edit: Dragon Child says that this may very well be impossible to do with 4e -- is it?

[Username17]

Actually it's pretty easy.

Starlocks suck the worst.
Orbizards and Healing Clerics break the RNG.

Grab a couple of things from the middle and you're golden.

-Username17

[Koumei]

Are healing clerics the ones that go "I grant my allies my Str as a bonus to hit!"?

Also, you could possibly sum it up as this:

God Tier: Orbizard, anything else with equivalent abilities
Top Tier: you start with a 20 in your relevant attack stat and have no real secondary stat. You buff this as much as possible.
Mid Tier: you have two attack stats, so you have 18 in each to start with and then buff these as much as you can.
Bottom Tier: anything else.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Well, I'll throw out a few more balance points. These don't hold the game hostage but they definitely throw the balance of the assumed group that you have a curveball.

Universal:
1) At about level 9 and beyond, you have to ditch the 1-encounter workday. This is the point where rangers can start one-shotting elite monsters and it only gets worse from there. The best you can do is try to curb novas by forcing characters to do a 4-encounter workday.

2) A lot of magic items do not become obsolete. Like, ever. Likewise, if you have a build like, say, a swordmage or a rogue you can get away with neglecting an armor upgrade. The game assumes that you ditch your old shit and always upgrade your weapon/armor/neck slot every chance you get.

Specific Classes:

1) Wizards in general. Orbizards are a special case, but wizards in general just rock your face off. At around level 7 when wizards have a +2 mnemonic staff and a +1 mnemonic staff in their corner pocket they can drop a daily attack power for four combats in a row. Which wouldn't be a big deal if their dailies were marginal crap like a druid gets. But wizards drop down stuff like Visions of Avarice and Stinking Cloud. The latter of which can get enlarged.

Wizard encounter powers aren't all that great until around level 17, when they start getting stuff that rocks your face off. But their dailies will always be their money-makers, even if you don't engage in orbizard shenanigans. Wizards get more ways to refresh daily attack powers than anyone. By a large margin.

2) Tactical Warlords
They're just merely 'okay' up until around level 16, when the Battle Captain or Infernal Captain get all of their class features and also start getting a selection of primo powers. One of my truisms is that a Battle Captain can make any party generically better, even if it's an all-ranged party that wants to fight all-ranged. If you're running a melee party though they can really churn out the extra attacks and attack bonuses.

3) Rangers
Well, since the Tempest Fighter has been dethroned as a viable build, they remain king of DPR. There are some niche builds that can exceed or even surpass Rangers, but they all depend on linchpin expansion options--for example the Avenger DPR will fall like a house of cards if Oath of Enmity gets errata'd to only work on ranger powers. The ranger has a much better foundation. But anyway, rangers pwn the hell out of you. You should not be surprised at all if a party that has two melee rangers in it wipes out the enemy in one or two rounds.

The Pitfighter ranger right now has been dethroned as DPR guy compared to the Stormwarden ranger because they can't grab Hero of Faith (latest avenger MC feat) and also need to sink two feats and also a precious stat bump into heavy armor. Also since static damage bonuses are a lot higher the Stormwarden ranger now gets about as big of a damage boost from their encounter-stance Throw Caution to the Wind + 2x Dex damage features as Dirty Fighting.

4) Invoker
If Orbizard is too cheesy for you but you still want to throw out massive save penalties, you can just be an Orbizard. At level 16 you can force all of the enemies you hate to have a -6 penalty to saves. That ain't bad, especially considering that Invokers have some really good powers. Wizard good even. Too bad your ass doesn't have Spell Focus or anything equivalent. Ah, well. Not good enough to hang out with the Wizard/Healing Cleric/Battle Captain/Ranger cool kids.

Any other class you can just pretty much allow without it breaking the assumptions of the game too much. There are some specialized builds you have to watch out for like the Cold Sorcerer, the Super Teleporter Swordmage, and the Half-Elf Avenger Ranger but all of their mojo just depends on one or two features that can easily be nerfed.

The tempest fighter and battlerager fighter have been handily and sadly dethroned so you don't have to worry about them anymore. They're classic examples of builds that revolved around One Big Thing where if you can hit that bullseye, the rest of the dominoes will fall like a house of cards. Checkmate.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Are healing clerics the ones that go "I grant my allies my Str as a bonus to hit!"?

No, healing clerics stack on as many +bonus to healing items as they can get and spam attacks that give surge-free healing.

They can be either Razor clerics or Laser clerics, since they both get an At-Will that lets them heal real nice--the razor cleric won't get much healing out of it at first but they have Righteous Brand so who gives a care? At around level 10 or so both clerics can stack on enough items so that they can heal more than enemies can dish out. The Razor Cleric also has the advantage of having encounter powers that do surgeless healing earlier and of course Righteous Brand. Laser clerics have an early-game advantage, razor clerics have a mid-game advantage, they're both about the same late-game.

Also, you could possibly sum it up as this:

God Tier: Orbizard, anything else with equivalent abilities
Top Tier: you start with a 20 in your relevant attack stat and have no real secondary stat. You buff this as much as possible.
Mid Tier: you have two attack stats, so you have 18 in each to start with and then buff these as much as you can.
Bottom Tier: anything else.

That analysis is a bit simplistic. Pit Fighter Rangers for example simply can't do the 20 stat thing. It's impossible. And I'd really hesistate to say that they're the middle of anything aside from the middle of a pile of bodies.

[Surgo]

I really hate to ask this of anyone, but since I don't know 4e that well I'm going to have to because I can't do it myself. Can anyone do a short writeup like http://dungeons.wikia.com/wiki/Dungeons ... nce_Points for the 4e "power levels" (can't really think of a better word to describe this). It shouldn't be particularly fine-grained, and you don't have to use classes as examples -- I just did for 3.5e because they were the things that came to mind. Like, for 4e I'd probably expect Righteous Brand to rank in the top category and that's not a class, it's a power. (Though what's the difference in 4e anyway, heh.)

[shau]

I'd actually say healing clerics are mostly overpowered because of their crazy daily abilities. Moment of Glory wins the battle win it first shows up. Then Consecrated Ground wins any battle unless the cleric is simultaneously killed and booted out of the zone or turned to stone or something. Then Spirit of Healing passes out more than sufficient healing. Then you have Stream and Salves of Power to look forward to.

Broken Tier would probably have the obviously exploitative stuff like yogi hat rangers, rust milking, that build that gives you infinite turns, and maybe Healing Clerics and Orbizards, but also includes some really petty stuff like low level battleragers and bow rangers that get all day flying from a hippogriph or cloud chariot or something.

Parties that use abusive tactics might fit here as well. Mongol parties for example or narcoleptic parties that sleep after every battle.

Super tier is full of the high power builds. Healing Clerics and Orbizards fit here if they don't fit up there. This also includes stuff like the fey charger that can go up to 300 or so damage with at wills. Everyone here is probably following a build of some kind to boost themselves up way beyond expectation. Generally this will include combining both feats and specific magic items, so it might be easy to break.

Good Tier would be the good touched classes played with a decent eye for cheese. Maybe something like a Bugbear ranger picking the more obvious damage feats.

Moderate tier would be the average. People who pick a character based on the description or picture and pick feats they like or without a real understanding of what they want to do.

Bad tier would be full of people who picked badtouched classes (warlock) and did not commit to one main stat.

[Surgo]

I'm really not looking to call anything "Broken Tier", or even think about things in those terms, because I think it significantly misses the point -- which is to say "if you use (this) in your game, (this article) should work okay too". And like, I think 5 is probably getting way too fine-grained.

[MartinHarper]

I don't see that animal companion rangers are more broken than healing clerics. Both are immune: damage at level 30. The cleric is theoretically more vulnerable, but makes the whole party immune: damage, and doesn't need to be level 30.

rust milking

Incidentally, I picked up MM2 recently. Since the preview, they added a ruling that if the players try to rust-milk then they arbitrarily only retrieve 20% residuum rather than 100%.

[RandomCasualty2]

Incidentally, I picked up MM2 recently. Since the preview, they added a ruling that if the players try to rust-milk then they arbitrarily only retrieve 20% residuum rather than 100%.

Where was this?

[MartinHarper]

MM2: page 179, "A guide to using rust monsters":

Be wary of PCs who try to abuse a rust monster's powers to their advantage by using rust monsters to consume items the PCs would otherwise sell for one-fifth value. In such cases, you should reduce the resulting residuum to one-fifth value, effectively making the rust monster a free Disenchant Magic Item ritual

For 4e power levels, I'd suggest one of the levels being the Quick Character Level: you went to the 4e character and clicked "quick character" button, fixed any obvious dumbness, and used that.

[Psychic Robot]

I think Rust Milking is pretty creative and not really broken.

[Kaelik]

I think Rust Milking is pretty creative and not really broken.

That's pretty much the problem. Rust Milking is creative.

And any time creativity gives you an advantage in 4e, it's because you are one of those bad Munchkins, and it needs to be stopped.

[RandomCasualty2]

I think Rust Milking is pretty creative and not really broken.

Well it's broken in the sense that you're able to trade in magic items for full value, which apparently is something the system specifically doesn't want you to do. So it breaks that aspect of the rules for sure.

Now, this pretty much isn't going to make the game entirely unplayable, but any advantage to having the anti-resale mechanics is now gone. Basically in practical play it means that you'll see less obscure magic items, since everything the DM hands out will always get instantly traded for the best magic items. The low resale value is a good encouragement to keep items that you find in your journey as opposed to just pooling everything into the main treasure fund. Honestly I consider that an advantage to the gameplay, since it means that you'll see more diverse magic item loadouts, but some people who favor character customizeability call it a drawback.

[Kaelik]

RC nothing about taking what the DM gives you creates more item diversity.

If you have different characters, you have different items for those characters.

If you DM gives you a cube of force, you trade that shit in no matter the conversion ratio.

The only thing it does is ass rape people who want certain items, since the DM gives them something shitty they don't need.

[RandomCasualty2]

If you DM gives you a cube of force, you trade that shit in no matter the conversion ratio.

The only thing it does is ass rape people who want certain items, since the DM gives them something shitty they don't need.

Well, 4E has a balance between DM treasure and PC treasure. The gold you collect can be used to buy whatever you want. And that's good, since if there's some item that's absolutely essential to what you're playing, you can go out and buy it.

However, the other half of your gear or whatever is handed out by the DM. Now, that can be bad if the DM abuses his power and shows favoritism. But it also means that you'll be using items you might not normally use.

Here's an example:

For instance, you probably want a bloodclaw weapon for your barbarian. And if you could choose, every single time, you'd take the bloodclaw. However, if the DM hands out a +3 flaming axe, you're probably going to end up using it anyway. But if you could just go out and trade that directly for a +3 bloodclaw you would, but the system doesn't give you an even trade, so you can't do this.

Now the flaming axe isn't really "shitty", it's just not the perfect optimal item you'd want. But that's actually good, because if every warrior type is running around with a bloodclaw, the game is boring. Having rules to prevent that is actually a good thing.

Random items can be nice like that, because they actually encourage you to think outside the box a bit. So maybe you'll find a use for that cube of force, instead of throwing it in the sell pile for another boring +1 bonus on your weapon.

[shau]

Getting back to the tier idea, I would say top tier would be this.

Cleric (Healic)
Wizard (Orbizard)
Ranger (Stormwarden?)
Fighter (MC Hammer)

That's pretty much the best class for each category. Cleric is on top of the leaders because he outheals everyone by a lot. Lago might want to argue for Warlord, but I've really never seen what they can do. If nothing else, I don't think they do low levels as well as the cleric. Wizard's top controller because they get crazy lose the game right now powers. Ranger I understand still wins the DPS war so he heads the striker class. Fighters are super durable and still muck around in striker level damage land and have defender stuff that might kinda sorta work, so they are the top.

I have no idea where everything else fits in. I had no idea there was even a class called invoker out until I picked up Complete Divine.

[Kaelik]

Nothing about that involves thinking outside the box.

It involves doing less damage with exactly the same amount of thinking, and oh yeah, if your character was a polearm fighter, you just get to be bitched.

[RandomCasualty2]

Nothing about that involves thinking outside the box.

It does if you end up with a weapon with abilities. See, the more abilities you have to deal with, generally the more thinking you've got to do. It's one reason that people support having a Winds of Fate system where your abilities randomly activate each turn, because it creates more tradeoffs and choices that you have to make.

Whenever you let people effectively choose everything, then generally they're built for a few super moves and just use those. Now obviously, the cherry picked option will lead to more powerful characters, but they're generally also more boring, because they really don't have to adapt at all. You build the character for one or two super schticks and you stick to those. Anything else gets sold off and used to fuel the super schticks.

And naturally, if you don't have a decanter of endless water or an anchor Qualls Feather token, you'll never even have to bother to think of creative ways to use it.

Personally I find it fun to get a few oddball items and think of creative ways to use them.

Now I'm not saying every item should be random. You definitely should get to choose a few items to go along with your schtick, but all cherry picked items gets seriously boring, because pretty much everyone ends up taking the same things, and that rarely involves any items that require much creativity, because those items generally arise out of reacting to a situation, which is something that you don't plan for. Any kind of cherry picked build is always the result of planning, and thus you know exactly how every item you picked fits in.

[Kaelik]

See how you quickly abandoned your different weapon example in favor of items that directly subtract from power. That's because DM items don't grant more options.

Yes, Decanter + X > X in number of options. But the Barbarian could also have bought fucking boots of flying, that's also an option, and also adds to thinking, it's just one where he doesn't get screwed over by the DM.

Now explain to me how in 4e the DM picking your items magically makes you keep shitty ones that subtract from your power.

[MartinHarper]

I think Rust Milking is pretty creative and not really broken.

If your creative idea is in a WotC book, it's probably not very creative.

[RandomCasualty2]

See how you quickly abandoned your different weapon example in favor of items that directly subtract from power. That's because DM items don't grant more options.

Different weapons can add options too, it's just not as immediately obvious, assuming your weapon has some kind of daily or encounter ability. Not all weapons really do this, but some do.

Yes, Decanter + X > X in number of options. But the Barbarian could also have bought fucking boots of flying, that's also an option, and also adds to thinking, it's just one where he doesn't get screwed over by the DM.

Not really, flying is about the least thinking power out there. Flight is just one of those all purpose no brainer abilities. In fact, the first thing people tend to think of is just fly whoring over every single obstacle in the game. Flight isn't really an option, because there's no reason not to use it. It's like calling weapon focus an option. It's a static bonus that you're going to use basically everytime if you can.

Now explain to me how in 4e the DM picking your items magically makes you keep shitty ones that subtract from your power.

Because they no longer subtract from your power if you can't convert them efficiently to other items. See if you can convert items directly into their full value, then keeping that decanter of endless water is a real bad idea because it is subtracting from your power. You could just go and convert it into a sword or winged boots.

But if you can't do that, then keeping the decanter isn't necessarily subtracting from your power. In fact, if the trade in value is bad enough, like 4E's 20% back, then selling the item may in fact be the action that subtracts from your power. Since while the decanter may not work all the time, it may well be useful enough that's its worth keeping for that one time it is helpful.

Now, the only time you're really losing power is if the decanter happens to be so shitty that you'd rather have an item of 20% of its value. Honestly, I don't see that really happening all that often.

[Psychic Robot]

If your creative idea is in a WotC book, it's probably not very creative.

That's true, but I'm almost certain that WotC only added that line after somebody on a messageboard pointed out how Rust Milking works. I'd like to see a rust farm, actually.

[Data Vampire]

It seems to me having an item that synergies with your build would be more powerful that another item that doesn't.

This should hold true even if they are of the same power level in a vacuum.

[RandomCasualty2]

It seems to me having an item that synergies with your build would be more powerful that another item that doesn't.

This should hold true even if they are of the same power level in a vacuum.

Yup. This is why it's usually a bad idea to allow people to trade in items for another equally powerful item. It pretty much ensures that you'll see nothing but a bunch of synergy items.

Sometimes it's good to have items that don't fit exactly, because it forces some out of the box thinking.