4th Edition Quirks

[Lago PARANOIA]

While I'm bitching about class design, I think that from a design standpoint the Warlord has to be the worst out of all of the classes.

Take a look at their powers. Some of the powers hand out incredible bennies depending on how the other characters are designed. Great Dragon War Cry is either a good power or a freakishly amazing power depending on how the other people in the party designed their characters.

Have you ever heard of something like that? That's stupid.

[JonSetanta]

On facing, WoW is a realtime game; turn based games don't fare so well with that.
Facing is used in Final Fantasy Tactics and it isn't a pretty sight.

Warlord sucks too IMO. I wouldn't bat an eye if the whole fucking deal was scooped up in to the Fighter and other warriors as a feat chain.

The function of Leader truly depends on the efforts and CharOpping of the party members, as well as what classes fill that same party.
1 Warlord and nothing but Fighters would be a sad, sad sight.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Warlord sucks too IMO. I wouldn't bat an eye if the whole fucking deal was scooped up in to the Fighter and other warriors as a feat chain.

I wouldn't go that far. If you are very careful in picking your powers and feats (hint: Battle Captain + Tactical Warlord) then Warlord can hand out a ridiculous amount of hurt.

I didn't say they were weak, I just think that they're a poorly designed class. I mean, a Tactical Warlord is an amazingly powerful companion for a Battlefield Archer or a Pathfinder for no real reason other than unforeseen class synergy.

That's idiotic.

[Absentminded_Wizard]

I still think daily powers are one of the worst ideas for 4th Edition.

Depending on your resting and adventuring schedule, your power can shoot way the hell up. I mean, even to an extent not seen in 3rd Edition since there were more spells to go around and combat didn't last as long. Let's not even get into the issue of action points and magic item powers, because it's depressing.

Since taking an extended rest and the schedule of adventures is a fukken roleplay concern and will be different for every game, this just shouldn't have been added. This is one of the most unworkable things about 4th Edition and it gets worse in the paragon and epic tiers.

Giving them to monsters was even dumber. Of course, one reason it was an even worse idea for WotC to put daily powers in a game is that it opens up a whole can of worms about how you define a day. Then, even when WotC tries to explicitly clarify how long a day is for purposes of recharging powers, they still manage not to be clear about it.

[RandomCasualty2]

Giving them to monsters was even dumber. Of course, one reason it was an even worse idea for WotC to put daily powers in a game is that it opens up a whole can of worms about how you define a day. Then, even when WotC tries to explicitly clarify how long a day is for purposes of recharging powers, they still manage not to be clear about it.

Well, for the most part monsters don't have dailies. There's only those monsters that you choose to make as PCs using the elite class templates. That's about the only monster dailies that I've seen so far in 4E.

But yeah, the whole daily ability thing is stupid. It was the same with 3E with daily spells, and it just leads to the 5 minute work day. What's really stupid is how they capped it so that you can only spend 1 action point per encounter. This specifically hoses people who want to do multiple battles in a row, because it takes away their one advantage which might be spending those accumulated AP on a difficult battle.

[Bigode]

Hey, conspiracy theory time. It's a well-known fact Andy Collins whined and jerked off obsessively to the fact that his fighter/barbarian wasn't very good in 3rd Edition. Do you think that his filthy semen-covered hand is responsible for this travesty?

Attention to the fact that the other class involved's the fvcking barbarian, which seems to me better than all other physical combatants (except perhaps swordmage, and not counting cleric) to this point. Am I on crack?

While I'm bitching about class design, I think that from a design standpoint the Warlord has to be the worst out of all of the classes.

Take a look at their powers. Some of the powers hand out incredible bennies depending on how the other characters are designed. Great Dragon War Cry is either a good power or a freakishly amazing power depending on how the other people in the party designed their characters.

Have you ever heard of something like that? That's stupid.

I'm not sure. The moment you define a class as support, that'll happen more the more relevant the class is; so, should it be de-emphasized?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Now that the Adventurer's Vault and Player's Guide to Faerun has come out, it's plainly obvious that whoever designed 4th Edition has a serious hardon for radiant damage.

It's the second-least resisted damage in the game, next to psychic damage, and it's the most frequently-occuring vulnerability. Add to the fact that it's also the most common elemental keyword in the player's handbook or magic item vault.

What gives, gentle readers?

[Bigode]

Now that the Adventurer's Vault and Player's Guide to Faerun has come out, it's plainly obvious that whoever designed 4th Edition has a serious hardon for radiant damage.

It's the second-least resisted damage in the game, next to psychic damage, and it's the most frequently-occuring vulnerability. Add to the fact that it's also the most common elemental keyword in the player's handbook or magic item vault.

What gives, gentle readers?

Being the most frequent vulnerability is, honestly, quite expected, and will be as long as fiends and undead are among the most common opponents. Resistances: here I'm not sure how thunder ("sonic", IIRC) lost its place as least resisted. Meanwhile, radiant's hard to resist simply because it's often related to goodness (fvck the idiot who made 2 entire classes use basically just it, as well as the confusion between "radiant" and "prismatic", which share very little thematic space), and the designers seem to have decided that the game's only about "goodness" to, surprisingly, a greater degree than 3.x, which explains the lack of good creatures as opponents. So, yeah, while common vulnerability is a bit hard to avoid even for the interested, there's a hard-on going on, and it likely stems from a certain Protestant minister (IIRC, James Wyatt) thinking common D&D play has anything to do with goodness, ethics, or anything to scornworthy.

[RandomCasualty2]

Now that the Adventurer's Vault and Player's Guide to Faerun has come out, it's plainly obvious that whoever designed 4th Edition has a serious hardon for radiant damage.

It's the second-least resisted damage in the game, next to psychic damage, and it's the most frequently-occuring vulnerability. Add to the fact that it's also the most common elemental keyword in the player's handbook or magic item vault.

What gives, gentle readers?

Yeah, radiant damage is like the divine damage, and we all know since 3E that WotC has a huge hard on for divines. That trend continues into 4E with the radiant bullshit.

[JonSetanta]

Now that the Adventurer's Vault and Player's Guide to Faerun has come out, it's plainly obvious that whoever designed 4th Edition has a serious hardon for radiant damage.

It's the second-least resisted damage in the game, next to psychic damage, and it's the most frequently-occuring vulnerability. Add to the fact that it's also the most common elemental keyword in the player's handbook or magic item vault.

What gives, gentle readers?

Give Good and/or living characters resistance to Radiant. If it's light energy, it should be beneficial in small amounts yet fatal in the extreme.

Something like Level + CON bonus Radiant resistance for anything with a CON score.

[Murtak]

I'm not aware of any MMOs where facing affects the stealth mechanics. It's possible that I've played one where it did and I didn't realize, but I'd be interested to hear what game(s) you're thinking of.

Everquest has Hide/Invis and Sneak as it's stealth features. Hide/Invis simply render you completely unnoticeable to creatures which are unable to penetrate that type of invisibility (there are several).

Sneak however renders you unnoticeable if you are behind the creature in question. So with some careful sneaking you can get past creatures fully capable of seeing you. Also you can pull tricks such as sneak-pulling: Say you have a group of three orcs. Circle around until they have their backs to you, then shoot an arrow into one and before the arrow hits, sneak. You are now effectively invisible to the orcs, except for the one you actually shot, meaning while he will yell for assistance (this actually does trigger some responses on certain creatures) the other orcs will not actually follow him.

Of course most rogues just made a hotkey which triggered both sneak and hide and refused to proceed past creatures which could see them, no matter if they were sneakable or not.

Edit: We hates the spellings, hates it.

[Bigode]

(...)

Welcome back. Posts like your destruction of PhoneLobster over Big Fat Squares have been missed.

[Voss]

.
But yeah, the whole daily ability thing is stupid. It was the same with 3E with daily spells, and it just leads to the 5 minute work day. What's really stupid is how they capped it so that you can only spend 1 action point per encounter. This specifically hoses people who want to do multiple battles in a row, because it takes away their one advantage which might be spending those accumulated AP on a difficult battle.

What gets me with the APs are the handful of abilities (or items) that actually generate APs. Which you either can't use, because you've already spent one in that encounter, or you now start accumulating a pile of normal AP that you can't use because your special abilities generated one.
Fun with bad design.


Plus the alternate uses for APs. You can either buy an extra action, which is good, or you can be special and... spend it on something that isn't as good. Gosh. decisions...


As for the Warlord... yeah. It wasn't well made. In places it can do absurd things with an intelligently made party. On the other hand, so many of its 'powers' are just so much trash, even on the 4e scale.

[Lago PARANOIA]

As for the Warlord... yeah. It wasn't well made. In places it can do absurd things with an intelligently made party. On the other hand, so many of its 'powers' are just so much trash, even on the 4e scale.

I think Warlord is a perfect example of the 4E design paradigm. Play the class completely like we intended or the game breaks. Or ends up outshining other people at its role.

For example, a paladin that's designed for it easily heals much better than a cleric, even at low levels. A laser paladin/cleric/hospitaler who loads up on Veteran's Armor can easily outdo the healing capabilities of two clerics.

Similarly, if you count DPR as a function of the party instead of just one character, Tactical Warlord hands out the biggest damage DPR boosts in the game. Lead the Attack is just out and out awesome. A level 11 Battle Captain can give the party a +13 to hit against the BBEG in the first round (or surprise round) if he opens with Lead the Attack, a level one daily. The best part is, that's not even cheese, that's what the class is supposed to do.

Back that ass up with Break the Tempo and the elite/solo BBEG will simply not have a chance in hell. The lopsidedness and hilarity gets even worse in epic.

Best paragon path published so far. If they can come up with a way to make characters get action points earlier I think we can see a return of 3.5E's hated rocket launcher tag/teleport ambushes with the difference being that only the PCs get rocket launchers.

[Lago PARANOIA]

By the way, while the majority of Warlord powers are out-and-out asstacular, the fact that players have a rotating pool of THREE encounter and daily powers over the course of their careers seriously make this a non-factor.

When Martial Power comes out it probably won't even fucking matter. Warlord and large suck but Warlords powers are the best in the level 15-23 range.

For example, a Tactical Warlord wants Thunderous Fury, Sudden Assault, and Hail of Steel (instead of a level 27 encounter power). They want Break the Tempo, Victory Surge (instead of a level 29 daily), and Lead the Attack.

That's totally retarded as it stands right now. Why even publish powers after level 23, if tactical warlords (the only kind of warlord you should be playing) find it better to double up on powers than use the rest of what's published?

[Lago PARANOIA]

Looking back, looks like my prognosis was completely incorrect. In Martial Power, Tactical Warlords get powers that will completely replace all three of their dailies I already mentioned and two of the encounter powers I already talked about.

They'll still want to be Battle Captains, though the choice now is whether epic-level battle captains would rather throw out a +9 power bonus to attack on one party member or a +7 power bonus to attack on two of them.

Bullshit. How did they fuck this up this badly? Battle Captains are now pretty much a mandatory requirement for anyone in the epic levels.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Did you know that while you're prone, nothing is preventing you from moving normally? You can shift, walk, and even run while you're prone.

Also, check out the clause on Grabbing:

To move a grabbed target, you must succeed on a Strength attack. However, helpless allies are treated as objects; you just pick them up and move them.

Okay, this throwaway rule causes a ton of problems, but we'll just get into the ones relevant for grappling.

Do you still need to succeed on a grapple check to grab helpless allies in the first place? If you're subjected to forced movement while carrying a helpless ally, do you drop them? Do you need a free hand to carry a helpless ally? What the fuck is going on here?

[CatharzGodfoot]

I wonder why helpless allies are easier to pick up than other creatures that are completely incapable of acting...

Is it to stop villains from shouldering the first PC to drop and running away?

[Roy]

I wonder why helpless allies are easier to pick up than other creatures that are completely incapable of acting...

Is it to stop villains from shouldering the first PC to drop and running away?

Don't give them more credit than they're due. It's because Giant Frog.

Lago: Pics or it didn't happen.

Edit: Forgot to mention the best part.

Lols, halflings benchpressing minotaurs for the win.

[Lago PARANOIA]

I do want to say that 4E's situation for dealing with summons, that is, summons use your own pool of actions (with an option for an action discount) is one of the better ideas to come out of that edition.

Of course, Josh had thought of the idea first way back when so who knows.

[Lago PARANOIA]

So why the crap do sorcerers, the arcane backline spellcasters have a mechanic that lets them use strength modifier for their AC but no other class does?

Are we really expected to believe that sorcerers can do something with their physical strength that no other strength-primary class can do? That sorcerers are actually tougher than barbarians?

Man, fuck this edition. Fuck it hard.

[Fuchs]

"Just don't think about it, don't try to make it make sense"?

[koz]

"Just don't think about it, don't try to make it make sense"?

As good a catchphrase for 4E as I have ever heard.

[MartinHarper]

So why the crap do sorcerers, the arcane backline spellcasters have a mechanic that lets them use strength modifier for their AC but no other class does?

Sorcerers use Str to power their magic, and have some type of stoneskin permanent effect up?
IE: a wizard did it.

[hogarth]

So why the crap do sorcerers, the arcane backline spellcasters have a mechanic that lets them use strength modifier for their AC but no other class does?

Your great-grandmother fucked a dinosaur, so you're covered in muscly scales. That's what makes the sorcerer unique.

Except for the dragonborn. OH SHIT....