4th Edition Quirks

[Koumei]

Well if I was going for as many swords as possible, and thus playing female as I usually do, then sure, 6.

Of course then we can just tie daggers to shoes as well, and maybe have lots of really long hair to tie around multiple other swords...

[shau]

Well if I was going for as many swords as possible, and thus playing female as I usually do, then sure, 6.

Of course then we can just tie daggers to shoes as well, and maybe have lots of really long hair to tie around multiple other swords...

WotC actualy did this. There was some book that let you put razors in your hair and use it as a weapon.

[JonSetanta]

Well if I was going for as many swords as possible, and thus playing female as I usually do, then sure, 6.

Of course then we can just tie daggers to shoes as well, and maybe have lots of really long hair to tie around multiple other swords...

Look, just cut to the chase and put on a full-body metal suit spiked with longswords.

Oh, and for maximum effect, play as a Bladeling.

[SphereOfFeetMan]

A poster on Enworld looked at 4e poisons:

So I'm paging through the DMG and I hit poisons. Of course I want to know what the most powerful poison is. Well here it is:

Pit Toxin: Level 25 Poison
156,250 gp
+28 vs. Fortitude; ongoing 15 poison damage and weakened (save ends both)

Your kidding right? I mean I've just spent enough money to found a city, and on average I'm not even going to be able to take out a first level character?

I understand why you may need special rules for poison, in combat (monster venom, poisoned weapons, etc.) but couldn't they have made poison (or at least some out of combat poisons) work like diseases? The way they work is actually pretty cool.

I was going to just play 4E as is, before making any house rules, but this may have to jump to the head of the line.

http://www.enworld.org/showthread.php?t ... ge=1&pp=15

[rapa-nui]

When one uses Eye of the Warlock (Warlock, Star, Utility, 16, pg. 137) on a friendly character can they willingly fail their saves to act as a range extension proxy?

If so, the power has no duration, and this could possibly last forever, effectively allowing the Warlock to go chill out in his house, and adventure by proxy (the power's range is only for placing the mark, it say nothing about a maximum range if the power is ongoing).

This fucking game has some really poorly worded shit.

[rapa-nui]

Another thing...

it doesn't actually say so anywhere, but the Bonus (Fake) Encounter powers gained from stuff like Half-Elf Dillettante and your first multiclassing feat shouldn't be replaceable by training or ability swapping. The rules need to make this explicit, otherwise you can cheese out an extra (real) encounter power or two per day.

If the rules do say so, someone please point out where.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Oh, another odd quirk. Wizards get two daily and utility powers each time they would normally get one, and then at the beginning of the day they choose which ones to prepare.

Seems normal so far, but your power slots are not limited by level, just by the total number you can prepare. So where a normal character would have powers of (relative) levels 4/3/2/1, a Wizard could have 4/4/3/3. This would matter more if Sleep (which is 1st level) wasn't just better than most of the Dailies, but it's probably a good deal on the Utility powers.

[RandomCasualty2]

Also it seems that there's no longer any way to upgrade existing magic items. So once you make an item, you just melt it into residuum or you sell it for 1/5 price. But you can't actually upgrade it. So you're going to lose a lot of gold this way, and having signature weapons is apparently not allowed any more unless you want your weapon to suck.

[Orion]

It's kind of cute how multiclassing is objectively better than skill training. That might mean multiclassing was good, if we cared about skills.

Actually, at first I thought multiclassing might be a good way to reduce MAD. Take abilities from another class based on your primary or secondary ability, then disregard the tertiary.

This kind of works. You can, in fact, make a Wizard who maxes WIS to abuse the Orb, then multis into Cleric to exploit that WIS and diversify his healing and control options. At least, it works if you can convince your DM to let you cast prayers with your orb.

But making this sort of thing work is actually extremely complicated. For one thing, many powers rely on a classes tertiary stats, which you're very unlikely to have. You might think, for instance, that your Star Warlock could round out his CHA-based powers by taking up Paladin and shooting lazors/smiting fools with your pact blade.

That would be a pretty sweet character concept too...

But no, gobs of Paladin powers have to base their secondary efects on *wisdom*. And since you're a CHA-based caster, you have essentially zero incentive to get any of that.

And when powers aren't based on an extraneous stat, they're based on a classes class features. There's no point in split-classing to pick up abilities that punish someone you've Cursed, for instance. Nor do you gain the benefits of the Warlord and Rogue's build-specific bonuses, rendering many of *their* powers worthless.

Many class combos only work one way-- A Rogue can do nicely for himself by picking up a fey pact and zapping people senseless with his pact blade. A Warlock gets almost nothing from going rogue and running around trying to shuv people with his DEX. Even once you've figured out that a certain class combo works, your build is essentially done for you. There's pretty much one power choice at any given level that actually works.

Edit: Don't get me started on the paragon clusterfuck. Most off-class paths don't work, and those that do give generic damage abilities that don't give you as much multiclass feel as if you did the multi-path, which screws you out of the "action" abilities which are the closest thing this game has to real class features.

[Fwib]

Oh, another odd quirk. Wizards get two daily and utility powers each time they would normally get one, and then at the beginning of the day they choose which ones to prepare.

Seems normal so far, but your power slots are not limited by level, just by the total number you can prepare. So where a normal character would have powers of (relative) levels 4/3/2/1, a Wizard could have 4/4/3/3. This would matter more if Sleep (which is 1st level) wasn't just better than most of the Dailies, but it's probably a good deal on the Utility powers.

Where does it say that? (explicitly or implicitly) (emboldening added for clarity as to which bit I meant)

[Username17]

Oh, another odd quirk. Wizards get two daily and utility powers each time they would normally get one, and then at the beginning of the day they choose which ones to prepare.

Seems normal so far, but your power slots are not limited by level, just by the total number you can prepare. So where a normal character would have powers of (relative) levels 4/3/2/1, a Wizard could have 4/4/3/3. This would matter more if Sleep (which is 1st level) wasn't just better than most of the Dailies, but it's probably a good deal on the Utility powers.

Where does it say that? (explicitly or implicitly) (emboldening added for clarity as to which bit I meant)

Daily and Utility Spells: Your spellbook also
holds your daily and utility spells. You begin knowing
two daily spells, one of which you can use on any given
day. Each time you gain a level that lets you select a
daily spell or a utility spell, choose two different daily
spells or utility spells of that level to add to your book.
After an extended rest, you can prepare a number of
daily and utility spells according to what you can cast
per day for your level. You can’t prepare the same spell
twice.

You get a "number of powers" not a "number of powers at each level." So yes, a Wizard can "trade up" to prepare two of his highest two levels worth of spells. And if you were in any way willing to replace Titan's Crushing Fist with Thunderclap, you'd care. But you're not, so you don't.

Although it means that if they keep writing new Wizard spells, that eventually they will print enough powers that the fact that a 15th level Wizard could pack his daily slots with two 15th level powers and a 9th level power might actually mean something.

-Username17

[Jacob_Orlove]

Right, it's not worth much on the dailies, but Utility powers do improve significantly with level, so you can have like 22/22/16/16/10 the minute you hit level 22, which is a lot better than everyone else's 22/16/10/6/2

Especially since I just noticed that you CANNOT REPLACE Utility powers. Wow, what a beating. Wizards get to stop using junk like Feather Fall and Levitate when they get better options, other classes straight up do not.

[Fwib]

Daily and Utility Spells: Your spellbook also
holds your daily and utility spells. You begin knowing
two daily spells, one of which you can use on any given
day. Each time you gain a level that lets you select a
daily spell or a utility spell, choose two different daily
spells or utility spells of that level to add to your book.
After an extended rest, you can prepare a number of
daily and utility spells according to what you can cast
per day for your level. You can’t prepare the same spell
twice.

Hmmm... I am fairly sure that both my DM and WotC(should they ever answer the question, if asked) would say that 'according to what you can cast' limits you by level of power - or not bother to discuss grammar/semantics and just house-rule/errata it.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Remember, at certain levels you replace an old power with a new one of any level up to your current level.

So a 15th level character could have a mix of daily power levels, such as: 9/5/1 (no replacement), 15/5/1, 15/9/1, 15/9/5, etc.

You can also take lower level powers instead of a power of your level, when you pick powers.

Finally, you can retrain a power to a power of lower level (5th to 1st, for example), but you can never retrain "back" from a low level power to a high level one. So a character could have three first level daily powers.

If a Wizard wants to run around with both of his 1st level daily powers prepared, and no 5th level daily, he can clearly do that. So why can't he use both 5th level daily powers, and no 1st level power? You don't have a 5th level slot and a 1st level slot, you just have two Daily slots.

[mlangsdorf]

No, you have a 5th level and a 1st level slot, with the option (chosen at level-up time) of filling the 5th level slot with a 1st level power.

The reason you can't chose 2 5th level spells is, as you've noted, you can't retrain to a high level.

[Username17]

No, you have a 5th level and a 1st level slot, with the option (chosen at level-up time) of filling the 5th level slot with a 1st level power.

The reason you can't chose 2 5th level spells is, as you've noted, you can't retrain to a high level.

[Citation Needed]

As far as I can tell, this is not true. You don't specifically have any slots of any particular level, you simply can't normally retrain an ability to a higher level ability. So when you get your 1st level Daily Power you can trade it back and forth to other 1st level Daily Powers, but you can't trade it out for a higher level power until 15th level when it explicitly gives you the ability to trade out one of your powers for a higher level power.

Near as I can read, Fighters have a 1st level slot and a 9th level slot, but not because this is stated anywhere, but merely because they gain a power at 1st level that they can't trade for a higher level power with normal retraining and they get a power at 9th level which may as well be from the 9th level list. But the Wizard simply learns 2 powers at 1st level and 2 powers at 9th level. On any particular day there is literally nothing stopping him from preparing both 1st level or both 9th level powers. It's not retraining, it's spell preparation, so it is in no way limited by the thing that limits Fighters.

---

Which does not change or interact with the fact that there is little or no correlation between spell level and spell power, meaning that it's not especially broken or even interesting that Wizards can do this.

-Username17

[Talisman]

Dammit, that should be broken!

[Voss]

That seems to be the chant for the whole game. You get x options (and *only* x options), but they aren't broken (which is good), but they aren't even interesting. Which should make people want to set designers on fire.

So... 5th edition in 5 years, with the tagline, making D&D interesting again?
Putting the complexity back?

[Koumei]

Which does not change or interact with the fact that there is little or no correlation between spell level and spell power, meaning that it's not especially broken or even interesting that Wizards can do this.

-Username17

I was just explaining to my sister that it doesn't even matter whether you can or cannot do that. The reason being that they're all shit, and there's practically no difference.

[RandomCasualty2]

I was just explaining to my sister that it doesn't even matter whether you can or cannot do that. The reason being that they're all shit, and there's practically no difference.

Honestly I don't think so. The high level stuff is actually fairly decent. I mean stoneskin is crazy awesome for 4E, better even than it was in 3E. Resist all 10 for a battle, which is basically like a guaranteed win. As far as uber buffs go, that's pretty crazy with the lower damage of 4E. The utility spells definitely get better to some degree.

As far as dailies, they get slightly better.

[Fwib]

On memorising higher-level powers in place of lower-level ones, WotC has spoken. I dunno if this counts as official rules text tho.

Can a 5th level wizard memorize two 5th level daily spells instead of a 1st and a 5th level daily spell?

At the end of each long rest, a wizard prepares one 1st-level Daily spell chosen from the list of 1st level daily spells in her spellbook. If she were at least 2nd level, she would also prepare one 2nd-level utility spell chosen from the list of 2nd-level utility spells in her spellbook. At 5th level she would also prepare one 5th-level daily spell from her list of 5th-level daily spells in her spellbook. She would repeat this process for every level that she has access to wizard daily or utility spells. She could not, as a 5th-level wizard, prepare a second 5th-level daily spell in place of a daily spell of a different level.

[Username17]

Even better is the answer before it:

How does retraining and multiclassing work with the spellbook?

If you retrain a daily or utility power you only replace one of your two choices for that level. If you replace the power with a power from a different class through multiclassing you replace both spell choices with the new power.

Since Wizards (or any characters) don't actually learn a new power at most higher levels, but merely have the option of retraining a lower level power into a higher level power, it is their claim that a 15th level Wizard only has one 15th level spell in their spell book.

Weird.

-Username17

[Fwib]

I think they meant the level of the power being retrained, rather than the level at which the retraining was done.

[edit] Is this a general step back in clarity for WotC publications?

[Username17]

Is this a general step back in clarity for WotC publications?

Yes. I officially have no fucking idea how they think Wizards are supposed to work.

At 1st level you get one 1st level daily power: which entitles you to put two 1st level powers in your spellbook. You can prepare one of them per day, and we're all good with that.

At 5th level you get a daily power again, which entitles you to put two fifth level spells in your spellbook. According to the FAQ, you have to prepare one 1st and one 2nd level spell each day, though there's no indication of that anywhere in the rule book.

At 9th level you get another daily power per day. This entitles you to put two 9th level spells into your spell book. You can now prepare 3 of your six spells each day, but the FAQ says you have to prepare a 1st, a 5th, and a 9th.

At 15th level... according to the FAQ you replace one of the six spells in your spell book with one spell of up to 15th level. This leaves you with spells of levels 1,5,5,9,9,15; 1,1,5,9,9,15; or 1,1,5,5,9,15. Now you can prepare three spells per day, which the FAQ insists must come one from each of the... four different spell levels you currently have access to.

So the FAQ says that at 15th level your three daily spells must be one first level spell, one fifth level spell, one ninth level spell, and one fifteenth level spell. I... don't know what that is even supposed to mean. I don't understand how something this simple and obvious could have possibly made it through playtesting of any sort.

-Username17

[Voss]

Hey, the wizard could almost do something useful!

Wait, wait. We stopped that. Good job, guys.