The Gaming Den

Some very simple questions.

What the fuck is up with the Michael Buffer workday? Why should classes (especially at high level) only get 1 encounter to show their stuff? D&D was always bad about punishing people on the princess side of the 'find and rescue the princess before she's killed / clear out the skeleton-infested dungeon' continuum' but Jesus it was never this bad. The cool thing about the Cleric Archer and high-level wizards and rogues was that they were always ready to dish out a helping of ass-whuppin' anytime anywhere.

The two-weapon fighting feats give bonuses if 'you are holding a melee weapon in each hand'. Nothing about off-hand. Okay, so if I'm holding a longspear or a glaive in both hands, do I get the damn bonus?

Polearm Gambit gives you an attack of opportunity if a non-adjacent enemy becomes adjacent to you. So do you get your AoO if an enemy teleports next to you or is pushed adjacent to you by another effect (pushes, pulls, slides don't normally trigger AoOs).

Does every separate [W] attack hand out associated feat/damage/garbage bonuses?

If you're throwing a melee weapon, can you still use a power that specifies 'melee weapon'?

What is up with the warlord? I understand what they were trying to go for with the class but it still doesn't seem very good. It seems like two fighters, a fighter and ranger, or a fighter and rogue would dish out way more hurt and control the battlefield better than a fighter and a warlord.

Am I going crazy, or did 4th Ed completely buy into the 3rd Ed 'being good at skills should cost you some power' BS, especially since fighters seem noticably better at the 'apply a huge beatdown while controlling your enemies' than rogues and rangers? Ranged attacks side.

Am I also going crazy, or is Epic Seeker going to be gold later on in 4th's run? Right now its moderately inferior to an Epic Trickster because most classes don't have powers your class can use, but I bet this changes when they release a ton of new classes.

Why didn't they just kill all of the useless flavor text, shrink the font by about 80%, and move the magic item section to the DMG and put in some more classes? D&D just doesn't feel right without a bard, barbarian, druid, and monk.

The Bard, Barbarian, Druid, and Monk will probably be in the next PHB.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:Some very simple questions.

What the fuck is up with the Michael Buffer workday? Why should classes (especially at high level) only get 1 encounter to show their stuff? D&D was always bad about punishing people on the princess side of the 'find and rescue the princess before she's killed / clear out the skeleton-infested dungeon' continuum' but Jesus it was never this bad. The cool thing about the Cleric Archer and high-level wizards and rogues was that they were always ready to dish out a helping of ass-whuppin' anytime anywhere.

The idea is that you are not supposed to use your Dailies until you fight the Boss, which is why the Boss has so fucking many hit points - the players will literally have twice as many super moves in that final confrontation. But yeah, it's annoying.

The two-weapon fighting feats give bonuses if 'you are holding a melee weapon in each hand'. Nothing about off-hand. Okay, so if I'm holding a longspear or a glaive in both hands, do I get the damn bonus?

Seemingly yes.

Polearm Gambit gives you an attack of opportunity if a non-adjacent enemy becomes adjacent to you. So do you get your AoO if an enemy teleports next to you or is pushed adjacent to you by another effect (pushes, pulls, slides don't normally trigger AoOs).

Yes. Movement doesn't trigger AoOs in that instance, but the feat still does. And yes, it's not much of a gamble, you always want to take the damn attack.

Does every separate [W] attack hand out associated feat/damage/garbage bonuses?

Yes. This means that Three Attacks for [W] + Strength modifier is way bigger than 7[W] + Strength modifier. It's seriously not even a close comparison.

If you're throwing a melee weapon, can you still use a power that specifies 'melee weapon'?

Sigh. Yes.

What is up with the warlord? I understand what they were trying to go for with the class but it still doesn't seem very good. It seems like two fighters, a fighter and ranger, or a fighter and rogue would dish out way more hurt and control the battlefield better than a fighter and a warlord.

The Warlord is justified only by the fact that multiple attacks are bigger than bigger attacks. So the fact that he does some bullshit and lets your friend get a bonus attack? That's way bigger than dishing out more damage could ever be.

Now, the Warlord goes severely out of style the moment that you have a team that doesn't fight basically just as well with a Basic Attack as with their at-wills. But if you have a Fighter, a Ranger, a Tron Paladin, or a Warlock in the party, the Warlord does OK. Sucks unholy amounts of ass if you have a party made of Clerics, Grind Paladins, Wizards, or Rogues though.

Am I going crazy, or did 4th Ed completely buy into the 3rd Ed 'being good at skills should cost you some power' BS, especially since fighters seem noticably better at the 'apply a huge beatdown while controlling your enemies' than rogues and rangers? Ranged attacks side.

Honestly, Rogues aren't good at skills, so I don't follow you here. The Rogue is pretty underwhelming honestly, but the Ranger has some big damage combos he can do.

Am I also going crazy, or is Epic Seeker going to be gold later on in 4th's run? Right now its moderately inferior to an Epic Trickster because most classes don't have powers your class can use, but I bet this changes when they release a ton of new classes.

I don't think it really matters. Abilities are pretty much interchangeable, save that each requires one or two stats to be maximized. While I posit that it is entirely possible that someone will find a way to patch together a list of high level powers that do something, in the vast majority of cases I truly believe that you are better off just going Demigod and taking a +1 modifier to both the stats that the powers from your class actually care about. You only get 4 dailies and 4 encounters, and only half of those get traded up after you become an Epic Seeker, so I really don't see it making much difference.

Why didn't they just kill all of the useless flavor text, shrink the font by about 80%, and move the magic item section to the DMG and put in some more classes? D&D just doesn't feel right without a bard, barbarian, druid, and monk.

There has been a lot of D&D without those classes. It would be D&D if we only had Fighting Man and Magic User.

But the real answer is because 4th edition is designed to be fast to write and to generate a lot of material that they can sell for money.

-Username17

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:The two-weapon fighting feats give bonuses if 'you are holding a melee weapon in each hand'. Nothing about off-hand. Okay, so if I'm holding a longspear or a glaive in both hands, do I get the damn bonus?

Depends how you read it, but I'd read it as requiring two weapons.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote: D&D just doesn't feel right without a bard, barbarian, druid, and monk.

They're all the classes that never worked right in the first place.

In 3.5, barbarian was a 5 level class (and some of those levels were dead), bard was the generalist who sucked, Druid was the generalist who beat everyone and monk was... well monk didn't have any real role to play in the party. Nobody really knows what monks were supposed to do well, but as the rules turned out, it ended up being nothing.

Okay, even more questions. But first, a statement.

A) What the fuck were they thinking with all of these fey little names for all of these activities? The names are way too similar and not very descriptive. People never get their Yu-Gi-Oh or their MtG cards mixed up, so WTF?

So anyway I'm going to be referring to some of these abilities by their level and class. Sorry.

B) Epic Trick can't be replenished except by extended rest. Okay. There's a daily warpriest utility ability that violates the rules and lets you replenish any daily power (which can include Epic Trick) when you roll a natural 20 but can't be replenished except by an extended rest.

Since we're doing idiotic exception-based design, can a warpriest/trickster combo these two abilities off of each other?

C) You can only take one AoO on another combatants' turn. Fine. But if you do something that causes people to trigger multiple AoOs on your own turn, then what?

Say for example a glaive warpriest/fighter has polearm gambit and that sweet warpriest marking ability. After marking a foe with their warpriest ability, they use 'Come And Get It', which causes enemies to shift two squares towards them. This triggers two AoO opportunities, one for a non-adjacent enemy moving adjacent to them and another for an enemy shifting in a threatened area. Can I take both of them, or what?

If you can, this will lead to some very interesting combos where a 16th level fighter is able to take four attacks with an encounter power all at full damage/attack.

D) What were they thinking with the soulforged armor? As written, this makes a fighter with that 22nd level utility power which lets you replenish half your maximum hp when you're at zero or below hp pretty much invincible in melee. Just another reason to pick up Epic Trickster, I guess.

E) There has to be a way that lets you dual-wield glaives that have reach. Maybe not now, but in the future. This will cause fighter attacks to explode. Well, explode as far as 4th Edition goes. If I am overlooking something though, could you tell me?

F) So. Marks. The book is woefully inadequate on explaining them. So some questions:

1F) What the hell is a mark anyway?

2F) A paladin marks a foe. Can the fighter use the benefit from Combat Challenge against them?

3F) A warpriest/fighter marks a foe with Combat Challenge. Do they still get the AoO benefit from their warpriest class?

4F) If you answered no to the above question, then what's wrong with a warpriest/fighter marking a foe with their warpriest ability then immediately with Combat Challenge? The warpriest mark doesn't go away when another mark gets laid on top of it.

G) So the epic trickster has an ability that tells the DM 'fuck you, you just rolled a 1. Deal with it'. Can you use this on other players by using the DM as an intermediary?

H) The fighter has the sole power in this game that lets them disarm. Yay. Except that... monsters don't have weapon entries even when they could be using weapons! What the hell?


And now, for the replies.

The idea is that you are not supposed to use your Dailies until you fight the Boss, which is why the Boss has so fucking many hit points - the players will literally have twice as many super moves in that final confrontation. But yeah, it's annoying.

So what do you do if that particular adventure doesn't have a boss or the players can decide to fight a boss on their own terms?

Do you just use all of your dailies when you think the adventure might be over or the duke promises you that after you save him from the bandits you get to rest in his palace? If you used all of your dailies fighting off the orc raiding party and the villagers beg you to rescue their livestock from the goblin cave, are you just supposed to go 'fuck that, there's probably a boss in there and I have no dailies.'

While I posit that it is entirely possible that someone will find a way to patch together a list of high level powers that do something, in the vast majority of cases I truly believe that you are better off just going Demigod and taking a +1 modifier to both the stats that the powers from your class actually care about. You only get 4 dailies and 4 encounters, and only half of those get traded up after you become an Epic Seeker, so I really don't see it making much difference.

No love for the ability to take an extra standard action the next turn after you use an action point? If you have warpriest or pit fighter or whatever, you might be able to dish out some 'serious' damage.

I guess it's not worth it now, but I assure you that in the not-so-distant future 4th Ed is going to hand out more encounter/daily powers (both known and usable per day) due to ability bloat. Guess we'll just wait and see.

No love for the ability to take an extra standard action the next turn after you use an action point?

Compared to two free healing surges at no action cost when you hit zero hit points? Not really. It's an extra use of one of your at-wills. I don't even really care. The Demigod does an extra point of damage with every attack, that's like nearly as much damage over a 20 round combat.

But the big deal here is that you standardly only get 2 Encounter Powers, 2 Daily Powers, and 3 Utility Powers (one of which normally is your Epic Destiny thingy). Frankly, the Demigod Utility thing where you get Regeneration 29 for one combat a day is basically better than anything you'd select off any list, so I don't count the Seeker's ability to choose a 22nd level Utility power as being particularly useful in that regard.

So anyway, at the end of the day your Seeker character will have:

• A 19th level Daily power from your Class.
• A 20th level Daily power from your Paragon Path
• A 25th level Daily power from any class.
• A 29th level Daily power from any class.
• A 13th level Encounter Power from your Class.
• A 17th level Encounter Power from your Class.
• A 23rd level Encounter power from any class.
• A 27th level Encounter power from any class.

That's it. That's the super magic attack matrix you get by 30th level. And the thing about those 4 omni slots is that you can spend multiclass feats to get them off of a single other class if you want.

Certainly right now there aren't enough classes to make it worth doing, and I suspect it never will be. Getting powers off multiple lists would only matter if abilities particularly synergized or were especially different one from another.

I really suspect that in 90+% of cases you are going to be dipping into Seeker to get your grubby mitts on like one power that does something stupid and combos with the rest of your stuff and happens to run off the stats you already have. And I'd seriously rather just spend two feats on multiclassing into whatever fucking class has that one power and then accepting the +2 to two stats for being a Demigod. Because seriously, +2 to your main stat is miles ahead of whatever they let feats do in this game.

-Username17

Holy shi--29 regeneration?

I completely forgot about that.

Yeah, combine that with soulforged armor and that dumb fighter utility ability that puts you at half-maximum hp as an immediate reaction... and wow.

No love for Epic Trickster, though? There's got to be some fun things you can do with those class abilities, I think.

Oh, also, frost weapon + wintertouched + lasting frost. Any fun?

Leress wrote:The Bard, Barbarian, Druid, and Monk will probably be in the next PHB.

I'm thinking barbarian and druid are almost definitely going to be in it, since it seems to be about "arcane, divine, and primal heroes." The bard might be in there under "arcane."

And even MORE rules questions.

So a character uses Force the Battle (FTR 28) on a power that does half-damage on a miss. Is the damage [Normal]/2+[W] or [Normal + [W]]/2?

A character uses Force the Battle and uses an at-will or encounter power (say, cleave) that does fixed damage. Now that it's doing rolled damage, do you suddenly get all of your damage bonuses?

You use a reliable power that targets multiple enemies at once and miss one or more them; do you keep the power?

I hope that they don't put in the sorcerer, like people seem to keep thinking they'll put in. The only purpose behind the sorcerer in 3E was the difference in spell memorization from the wizard, which isn't something that can exist in 4E.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:And even MORE rules questions.

So a character uses Force the Battle (FTR 28) on a power that does half-damage on a miss. Is the damage [Normal]/2+[W] or [Normal + [W]]/2?

A character uses Force the Battle and uses an at-will or encounter power (say, cleave) that does fixed damage. Now that it's doing rolled damage, do you suddenly get all of your damage bonuses?

You use a reliable power that targets multiple enemies at once and miss one or more them; do you keep the power?

Only dailies get the half-damage on a miss thing, and Force the Battle doesn't work on dailies - maybe it will become a question to ponder in the future.

virgileso wrote:I hope that they don't put in the sorcerer, like people seem to keep thinking they'll put in. The only purpose behind the sorcerer in 3E was the difference in spell memorization from the wizard, which isn't something that can exist in 4E.

The only reason I'd possibly ever want the sorcerer class added is if it's another caster based striker, just so we can have one who's fluff isn't 'Weeeeee! I'm a freaking moron that make deals with dark forces that love screwing over mortals who make deals with them, next I'm going to stick a chainsaw into my pants while it's still turned on, what's the worst that can happen?'

Just noticed that No Surrender got errata'd to a free action. Since free actions can be done at any time now, what fighter (or anyone) worth their salt WOULDN'T want this ability? You don't even need Soulforged armor, the stuff just allows you to stretch out your uses of No Surrender.

Unfortunately, cleave got errata'd to only allowing a different adjacent target. Sadness.

I'm going to post my pitiful attempt at a Juggernaut Shepard (a fighter that focuses on using Force the Battle) sometime later. It's not a complicated build; you use Polearm Gambit, Combat Challenge, that Warpriest marking ability and the encounter power itself while shifting a lot to trigger a boatload of attacks. It makes use of Heavy Blade Opportunity for Cleave for some some extra dizzamage and at level 30 (the only level CharOppers care about), you slap a [W] on all of your attacks with Force the Battle and you end up getting up to 6 attacks on an enemy per round.

FrankTrollman wrote: I really suspect that in 90+% of cases you are going to be dipping into Seeker to get your grubby mitts on like one power that does something stupid and combos with the rest of your stuff and happens to run off the stats you already have. And I'd seriously rather just spend two feats on multiclassing into whatever fucking class has that one power and then accepting the +2 to two stats for being a Demigod. Because seriously, +2 to your main stat is miles ahead of whatever they let feats do in this game.

The seeker wouldn't be half bad if you could get other classes class abilities.

The biggest problem with getting another classes shtick in 4E is that you get the powers but not the abilities, and lets face it, the abilities are the important shit, because the powers are more or less alike. If you can't get the extra damage from sneak attack, then having rogue powers is ass. I mean fuck, they don't even let you use a wand if you take a wizard spell.

Double post.

Triple post. WTF?

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:What is up with the warlord? I understand what they were trying to go for with the class but it still doesn't seem very good. It seems like two fighters, a fighter and ranger, or a fighter and rogue would dish out way more hurt and control the battlefield better than a fighter and a warlord.

They made the warlord a more damage-intense cleric. Which is utter crap, because a cleric can do almost anything a warlord can, except better. Warlords have the "everyone gets an attack" schtick, but it really happens so rarely that it's just not worth it.

Apparently people "don't like playing healers", so they created melee classes that have a few healing powers. Which is just dumb, because you should just pick one damn schtick and stick with it, instead of becoming the next bard.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:B) Epic Trick can't be replenished except by extended rest. Okay. There's a daily warpriest utility ability that violates the rules and lets you replenish any daily power (which can include Epic Trick) when you roll a natural 20 but can't be replenished except by an extended rest.

Since we're doing idiotic exception-based design, can a warpriest/trickster combo these two abilities off of each other?

No. Specific overrides general (and this is stated in the rules somewhere). Epic Trick specifically cannot be replenished except by an extended rest, while Battle Favour is a general ability to replenish daily powers.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:C) You can only take one AoO on another combatants' turn. Fine. But if you do something that causes people to trigger multiple AoOs on your own turn, then what?

Say for example a glaive warpriest/fighter has polearm gambit and that sweet warpriest marking ability. After marking a foe with their warpriest ability, they use 'Come And Get It', which causes enemies to shift two squares towards them. This triggers two AoO opportunities, one for a non-adjacent enemy moving adjacent to them and another for an enemy shifting in a threatened area. Can I take both of them, or what?

If you can, this will lead to some very interesting combos where a 16th level fighter is able to take four attacks with an encounter power all at full damage/attack.

You can take one opportunity attack due to polearm gambit.
Additionally, you can take one melee basic attack as an immediate interrupt due to the fighter's "combat challenge" class feature. This is not an opportunity attack.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:2F) A paladin marks a foe. Can the fighter use the benefit from Combat Challenge against them?

No, due to errata.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:3F) A warpriest/fighter marks a foe with Combat Challenge. Do they still get the AoO benefit from their warpriest class?

I'd say that a foe marked by Combat Challenge does not trigger the effects of Warpriest's Challenge, and vica versa.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:4F) If you answered no to the above question, then what's wrong with a warpriest/fighter marking a foe with their warpriest ability then immediately with Combat Challenge? The warpriest mark doesn't go away when another mark gets laid on top of it.

Combat Challenge states "a creature can only be subject to one mark at a time. A new mark supersedes a mark that was already in place". Therefore Combat Challenge would either supersede Warpriest's Challenge, or be superseded by it, depending on what order the marks were applied.

The 13 Wise Buttlords wrote:H) The fighter has the sole power in this game that lets them disarm. Yay. Except that... monsters don't have weapon entries even when they could be using weapons! What the hell?

Could you elaborate on this question? Monsters have weapon based powers and their weapons listed in their equipment.