The Gaming Den

My girlfriend and I got involved with a roleplaying group, and they're pretty adamant about using 4E rules. So, I'm looking for advice and ideas. We'll be the only ones willing to work together in character creation, so we can't rely on the other players to make characters that synergize.

Our DM only owns the first three core books in dead-tree format, but has most of the others in PDF format and doesn't seem against any particular book. Important fact is that he's using the books as written, so there is no errata being used. He will house-rule anything that is disruptive, so nothing like the Yogi Hat Ranger.

We are starting at level 1, so nothing for theoretical builds by extreme levels. There will be four other players. The DM is explicitly states he's going to be playing it casually, so treasure isn't going to be strict parcel or anything and there'll be MTP moments here and there I am certain.

What is the best/most-powerful pair of characters that we can make? Two character synergy is an ideal, but just two people being awesome works too.

Well...

A pair of necromancer clerics. Take the powers which let you raise dead guys with 1 hp when you kill them.

Then take surgeless healing.

Now lead your army of dominated bitches to victory while healing and shooting Jesus lasers.

Depends on the makeup of the rest of the party and what level you're planning to end at.

My experience has shown that it's really hard to get other people to play Leader characters and that people prefer to play melee characters. No biggie, though. My suggestion for the two characters:

Stat Arrays for both of you are 18 / 14 / 11 / 10 / 8. If the Warlord is in it for the long haul then they want to be 16 / 16 / 13 / 11 / 10 /8.

One of you is a Bravura (CHA-focused) Warlord. You take Combat Leader. Your At-Wills are Direct the Strike (make sure someone in the party has a decent ranged basic attack though!) and Viper's Strike (to let people disengage). Your At-Wills suck, it's just something you have to live with. Your encounter attack power is Vengeance is Mine, with a Daily Power of Lamb to the Slaughter. Depending on how many levels you expect the campaign to be, pick up a Human (Heroic Effort racial ability, Greatspear Proficiency, and Spear Expertise) or a Dragonborn/Vryloka.

The other one of you is a STR/DEX with your lowest stat in WIS (or STR/WIS, see below) Battle Cleric. Runepriests have their merits but not at low levels. You can be a Longtooth Shifter or Human depending on length of the campaign. Your channel divinities are Healer's Lore and Favor of the Gods. Now this person can pick up the same feats as their Warlord friend or if you're more in a 'boost your buddies' mood you can pick an alternate feat package; unfortunately this may not be available depending on how your DM rules things. What you want to do is pick up Power of Skill (makes Righteous brand a MBA) and Power of Moon (makes Righteous brand inflict a -2 penalty to all defenses, making it as good as it used to be), but unfortunately there is no deity, let alone a core deity, that provides this combination. If that's a no go, pick the same feat package as your Warlord buddy but still pick Ioun as your deity.

Anyway, your At-Wills are Righteous Brand and if you're not using the below trick a Ranged Will of your choice. In either case don't worry about MAD or cost ATM, you're low level so those things aren't of concern yet. Your encounter power is the mighty Mighty Hew for damage and hit-point preservation. Your daily power is the godly Moment of Glory. Don't worry if you can't hit worth beans with the power--not only is this what you want to happen (see below cheese trick) but the best part of the power (resist 5 sustain) isn't dependent on you hitting.

For both characters, if your DM will let you pick up themes, strongly consider Gloomwrought Emissary or Guardian. They have very helpful powers that will break up the low-level monotony. If you're using Guardian you can create a lot of hilarity with that class feature, since it throws out extra attacks and triggers defender's marks. In fact Warlords in general are really good about that.

As far as advancement goes, here's a scheme for up to level 6, making adjustments for race.

Cleric:
Feats: (if you went with the Righteous Brand package) Weapon Proficiency: Greatspear. Spear Expertise. Weapon Focus: Spear. If you didn't go with the Righteous Brand Package, pick up Power of Skill, Weapon Focus: Greatspear and Battle Awareness.
Level 2 Utility: Shield of Faith
Level 3 Encounter Power: Pick up Healing Strike or Resurgent Sun. Healing Strike is less likely to hit, but Resurgent Sun is guaranteed to land. Even if you're not hurting for healing get one of those two powers anyway, cleric encounter powers at this level suck.
Level 5 Daily: Inspire Fervor
Level 6 Utility: If you're being harried by long workdays, pick up Stream of Healing. It's really boss. If you do 15-minute workdays, pick up Mark of Victory. If you feel like blowing open a DM's plot, pick up Soul Cage.

Warlord:
Feats:
Level 3 Encounter Power: No Gambit Is Wasted. The person uses this on their cleric buddy to ensure that you have access to loads and loads of Moment of Glory. Do everything you can to make that power miss--that's why I recommended against you putting your low stat in wisdom. If your DM doesn't let you do that kind of extreme cheese, get Diabolic Stratagem instead and combo it off of your Guardian feature.
Level 5 Daily Power: Staggering Spin.
Level 6 Utility: If you went with Dragonborn, pick Dragon's Tenacity (you get the +3 power bonus to attack rolls with or without being bloodied). Otherwise pick Leader's Intercession for defender-mark triggering. If your defender has a sucky mark like a cavalier you can pick up Invigorating Shout.

Lago knows 4e better than I do, but I think he missed a relevant point:

virgil wrote:Our DM only owns the first three core books in dead-tree format, but has most of the others in PDF format and doesn't seem against any particular book. Important fact is that he's using the books as written, so there is no errata being used. He will house-rule anything that is disruptive, so nothing like the Yogi Hat Ranger.

You say 4e and not Essentials:

So my advice is:

You are a pair of clerics. One of you is the macho-guy with Righteous Brand and a big sword (Str primary likely Wis secondary - although you can argue Cha with certain power selections). Take the domain feat that lago mentions so you can use Righteous Brand as a basic attack to open up charging and OA with it to you. Other than that, build the guy like a fighter, bigger to-hit numbers, bigger armor, bigger damage. I strongly recommend going human and burning the feat on Fullblade or other big +3 proficiency weapon. Take Weapon of Astral Flame (divine power) as your L1 daily because its additional minor action attack is huge at 1st level (even without adding Str). If your DM isn't using the "healers lore only applies to surges" errata, you want recovery strike as another at-will. If he is, you consider making Cha your secondary stat and take it anyways. While you'll never hit with it, you actually take Sacred Flame for your human bonus at-will, because the slim chance to grant a save is better than any other option left.

There is a risk here that righteous brand ain't so grand if your party lacks meleers, but as Lago mentions that seems unlikely

The other is a thoughtful type with Astral Seal (Wis primary, Cha secondary) and a near-total lack of any powers that deal damage, but an overabundance of Heals and powers that give enemies penalties (pretty much everything for this build comes out of Divine Power). Astral Seal, Sacred Flame, Bane, Font of Tears (or Moment of Glory)

Those are both probably slightly-too-good, but in ways that help the rest of the team instead of being disruptive, so odds are good they don't get nerfed. Even if they do, you're both passable in two ways . Without righteous brand, the big sword cleric is still a solid-though-not-great frontliner who can effectively self heal to tank and burn a daily to attack twice per round. And even without crazy surgeless healing, the Astral Seal cleric is still shifting enemies far enough on the RNG to make the rest of the team happy.


Alternately, there is some crazy stuff you can do with unerrata'ed Battlerager fighters, Tempest fighters and Twin Strike rangers - but that stuff seems more likely to get nerfed as "disruptive" and more likely that other players will build characters optimized for melee damage output.

I know it said that you weren't using errata, but you do want your characters to use the online tools and those force you to use errata anyway. If you're doing everything offline then all bets are off though.

Actually, scratch that. If you're not using errata then you CAN'T use any of the online materials since there's no way to roll back. You need to construct stuff from the bottom up.

Right.

But he expects the DM is gonna nix stuff that's obviously disruptive. Which makes the best exploit that won't obviously be nerfed at the table to play leader-types who make other characters better.

It also helps that the typical player group is usually short on healers and in 4e combining buffing powers is crazy strong.

I know one person is being a sling-based rogue, another is a wizard (likely fire love if I judged that player right). No idea on the other two.

While a fire wizard probably benefits more from something like Lago's warlord build, pretty much all of the heroic tier cleric encounter power options include viable choices that set up sneak attack - there are blind, daze and prone as well as just "allies get combat advantage" options there.

Oh, one will be an Ardent. From what I can tell, an Ardent is a Leader with an emphasis on range-friendly status effects.

So far, it's looking like a wizard, ranged rogue, and a leader of the ranged. There's one other mystery PC, which has a decent chance of being a leader if the DM is being right in his guessing of the guy's predilection.

I'm uncertain of what the DM will deem disruptive. I know he'll nix the huge stuff that makes you immortal or do infinite damage (Yogi Hat Ranger, Ranger of one-rounding Orcus), but he might not care about the 'merely really good' level stuff.

The fact this is sans errata seems to be a major point, after rereading old 4E threads around here. My girlfriend is interested in something strikery, but will choose effectiveness over that if such is the case.

I'm going to second the use of a Dwarven Battlerager Fighter. I'm pretty certain that there's nothing in the game as disgustingly survivable as one of those guys... and he hits pretty damn hard too.

The only thing I'd watch out for is if the DM is one of those guys who'll look at how well the party is doing and start raising the levels of the monsters in encounters (it's what I'd do). This may lead to hurt feelings.
Will recommend talking to the Other players to see what they're going to do and build characters that are slightly but not overly better than theirs.

My girlfriend is thinking of going with the heal-y cleric Josh speaks of, and I'm thinking of Lago's Battle Cleric. I'm assuming this is the one of the most powerful pair of characters we can make with 4E unerrata'd rules? We're both open to suggestions on stuff to take for even greater power, especially if they fit the roles of healing and buffing for each of us (she likes the healing part)

Finally a better list...
Fire Wizard
Ardent
Sling Rogue
Greatsword Fighter
Leader (warlord?)

You could just make a Ranger who kills things very quickly and then sandbag yourself until you match with the rest of the party.

That way, everything will soon be dead, and you can get back to MTPing around, which is the only way I have ever had fun with 4E.

Making a righteous brand battle cleric; trying to decide between human and longtooth shifter and choosing from the feat list of Greatspear proficiency, Power of the Moon or Power of Skill.

Also trying to decide what feat the healing-focused cleric should take.

Righteous Brand only gives allies the bonus on a hit, prioritize to-hit bonuses.

Personally, for a game starting at L1, I would go human and take both the WP and Power of Skill - but as I stated above, I would chose a L1 daily which does [W] damage as sustain minor. If you go with Lago's alternate suggestion of Moment of Glory for your L1 daily, then the size of [w] matters a little bit less. And while I suggested Weapon of Astral Flame, Moment of Glory is really pwnsome for the first few levels, in that it can make a party nigh-immune to straight HP damage while sustained - but in practice I found that the other PCs were never positioned optimally and rarely even positioned *well* for it. If your group is more tactically cohesive, or if you don't use a battlemat/terrain then you'll likely fare better with it.

What about my girlfriend's healing cleric? I'm assuming the cleric is an ideal class for the most powerful healing/buffing of the party? We're really not sure on race/feats and such for optimal healing/buffing.

Here's a thread which goes over Divine Power in detail

Shau, Lago and I discussed various cleric exploits within the ruleset as it was evolving at that time..