Low level 4E combat is a bunch of bullfuck.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Okay, seriously, WTF were they thinking? Here's how this bullshit goes!

*use your encounter attack power*
*maybe use your daily*
*spend the next 3-5 rounds using your at-will*.

That's bullshit. I don't want to have a 50% chance of doing 2d4+4 damage. Who's fucking idea was that?

[Lago PARANOIA]

I... I meant to put this in the IMHO forum.

I apologize.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

It's all good, you make a good point. It sucks monkey fuck


IT SUCKS MONKEY FUCK!

[Lago PARANOIA]

You know, I didn't really realize how ridiculous my mix n' match swearing was until I watched Angry Video Game Nerd.

I'm a little sad now.

[fbmf]

I... I meant to put this in the IMHO forum.

I apologize.

No problem. Taken care of.

[/TGFBS]

[Roy]

Okay, seriously, WTF were they thinking? Here's how this bullshit goes!

*use your encounter attack power*
*maybe use your daily*
*spend the next 3-5 rounds using your at-will*.

That's bullshit. I don't want to have a 50% chance of doing 2d4+4 damage. Who's fucking idea was that?

Look at how bad WotC fucked 3.0 and 3.5. Is it that hard to see why they would Epic Fail worse?

[MartinHarper]

You get to pick which of your at-wills to use, which can be interesting, or can be a non-brainer, and you may have class features and racials and flanking and suchlike to consider. Regardless, yes, 1st level d&d is very very simple. And yet, it's still complicated enough to confuse some players.

Expert d&d players should probably be playing 4e gestalt or some such, so they have more options.

[Kaelik]

The worst part is, Lago, I've never seen a single 4e game online that didn't start at level 1.

While I granted don't go looking for them, it confuses me to no end that people genuinely find "I magic Missile"x5 to be entertaining.

I mean, I can barely stand level 1 3.5, because it's, "I use generic repeatable attack power 3 times" or "I delay, I delay, Color Spray." But 4e removes option 2, and extends option one significantly.

[Bigode]

The worst part is, Lago, I've never seen a single 4e game online that didn't start at level 1.

While I granted don't go looking for them, it confuses me to no end that people genuinely find "I magic Missile"x5 to be entertaining.

Also, I've entertained the suspicion that the newer 1-3 class previews aim at getting people to cycle through games faster and leave low levels less often, so as to hide away the full extent of their fail.

[Orion]

Eh, I didn't find 4E combat all that boring at level one. You honestly have more options and abilities than most level one D&D characters.

Of course, I was playing a five-person party. And they were almost all multiclassed.

Honestly though level 1 is the *most* workable part of 4E

[koz]

Eh, I didn't find 4E combat all that boring at level one. You honestly have more options and abilities than most level one D&D characters.

Of course, I was playing a five-person party. And they were almost all multiclassed.

Honestly though level 1 is the *most* workable part of 4E

I find this incredibly hard to believe. A 1st level 3.5 wizard has OODLES more options than a 4E 1st level wizard. Even a fighter in 3.5 can do a lot more, as they have bullrush, trip, disarm, sunder, overrun... the list goes on.

Could you kindly enlighten us to how you were led to this belief?

[Roy]

Eh, I didn't find 4E combat all that boring at level one. You honestly have more options and abilities than most level one D&D characters.

Of course, I was playing a five-person party. And they were almost all multiclassed.

Honestly though level 1 is the *most* workable part of 4E

I find this incredibly hard to believe. A 1st level 3.5 wizard has OODLES more options than a 4E 1st level wizard. Even a fighter in 3.5 can do a lot more, as they have bullrush, trip, disarm, sunder, overrun... the list goes on.

Could you kindly enlighten us to how you were led to this belief?

Of course every single one of those Fighter options is pointless at level 1, because it'd be easier to just stab them in the face than to push them a little, or trip them (though trip and attack works fine), or knock their weapon aside, or break your own stuff, or run over them. Still, compare auto attack to auto attack that tries to pretend it isn't auto attack... yeah.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Eh, I didn't find 4E combat all that boring at level one. You honestly have more options and abilities than most level one D&D characters.

Of course, I was playing a five-person party. And they were almost all multiclassed.

Honestly though level 1 is the *most* workable part of 4E

All low-level combat in D&D sucks balls. Things don't pick up until about a fourth of the way into the game.

4E is just fucking baffling because combat becomes a LOT less tedious at level 7 than at level one, which makes me wonder why they gave players one or two non-at Will dinky-ass powers no one gives a fuck about and tells them that it's supposed to be good for 20-25 rounds! What the fuck?

[Koumei]

The worst part is, Lago, I've never seen a single 4e game online that didn't start at level 1.

I have. I think it was 15 or 20, because the DM had some plot ideas taken straight from, wait for it, you'll never guess... World of Warcraft.

I'm serious.

Anyway, I almost joined, until a debate on Why 4th Edition is utter balls turned into a large-scale argument. I'm not even sure the game got off the ground, though.

Actually, come to think of it? Now I remember what started it. I was playing a Cleric that grants allies the huge bonus to hit. I casually said "Okay, so I grant a +8 to your attacks, effectively doubling your stat bonus to hit them, because you DO have a 26 in your attacking stat, no exceptions."

Which led to the argument on which game requires rules mastery more and has more pitfalls, and then general points of suckitude.

[Bigode]

Congratulations. Except for the part where you considered playing 4E.

[Koumei]

I thought maybe I should try it before I peak pure hatred against it. Then I remembered that that school of thought promotes eating shit and breaking your fingers with a hammer (how can you know it's bad if you haven't tried it?) and smart people can infer something just by reading the fucking books (as well as interpreting what the WotC fuckbags say).

Also, I need some depleted uranium. Not for harming people, you understand, but because it might just be heavy enough to weigh this fucking base down so the zoanthrope doesn't fall over and knock its own head off (again).

[koz]

For me, 4E exists for one purpose only - finding ways to break the shit out of it.

[Akula]

I have some mercury sitting around. Though I don't suppose that helps much.

Doesn't 4E combat get longer as you go up in levels? Don't you stop gaining more abilities at around level 9? And aren't all of the powers carefully calibrated so that they are no more powerful against your expected opposition? That is, as much as anything in 4E can be said to be done carefully or work from any preconceived plan. From what I understood, level 1 was the high point of 4E. Though the high point of a steaming pile of shit still being, well, shit shouldn't really astonish anyone.

[Draco_Argentum]

But 3e was more fun to break. 4e broken is small, weak cheese by 3e standards.

Koumei, try getting some lead sinkers from a fishing supply shop and beating them into the right shape.

[Gelare]

Man, I remember when I looked through the 4E PHB and discovered that Meteor Swarm, the most powerful attack I could find in that book and one of the most famous evocations from the last edition, doing 32d6 points of damage in 3.5, now did 8d6+int mod points of damage. 8d6. Not, like, 18, or 80. Eight. I was, at that point, done with 4th edition.

[Fuchs]

Man, I remember when I looked through the 4E PHB and discovered that Meteor Swarm, the most powerful attack I could find in that book and one of the most famous evocations from the last edition, doing 32d6 points of damage in 3.5, now did 8d6+int mod points of damage. 8d6. Not, like, 18, or 80. Eight. I was, at that point, done with 4th edition.

That's something that put me off as well - the spells and attacks do piddly damage compared to 3E. I am used to Swooping Dragon Strike, Finishing Move, and such, enhanced by Blood in the Water, Inferno Blade etc. cutting enemies down in a few attacks.

[Koumei]

Lead sinkers, good idea...

And yeah, Disintegrate won't even 1-shot creatures from many many levels ago (as in "You're not even fighting these in huge groups any more").

[ckafrica]

I remember thinking, during my cursory look at 4e, that it would probably go a lot better if you let everyone take as many encounter and dailies at 1 as you eventually get later. Has anyone tried that?

[Psychic Robot]

Nooo, that would lead to the game being unbalanced!

[Username17]

I remember thinking, during my cursory look at 4e, that it would probably go a lot better if you let everyone take as many encounter and dailies at 1 as you eventually get later. Has anyone tried that?

There aren't enough encounters and dailies to go around.

Seriously, you ultimately get four dailies. Not only does the book only contain three first level dailies for a Paladin to have, but two of them are aspected for a Grind Paladin and only one for a Tron Paladin. If you are a Tron Paladin, you have "Paladin's Judgment" because it is the only power in the book for you to take. Similarly, Paladins get to choose two at-wills and the book literally only includes two Grind and two Tron at-wills to have.

While I agree that the game would be much better if people had more stuff to do right out of the gate (and indeed throughout their entire fucking careers), the fact is that lazy authors did not actually write enough material for that to be an easy option. Tron Paladins are all the same not just because there are two at-wills and a daily power that are clearly superior to everything else they can do, but rather because there is literally only the two at-wills and one daily on their entire list. There's nothing else for them to have.

So questions about whether Paladins should get more things on their list (they should) are interesting, but honestly kind of pointless unless you intend to write up a bunch of powers yourself. I would say that this is the single thing really holding up Fantastic! more than anything. Writig up powers is incredibly dull, and for a game to be interesting and playable it needs to have a lot of powers. It needs to have not only enough powers that each character can be interesting in play, but enough extra powers that two characters of the same class can be interestingly different from each other. You need enough Cape powers to select from that Galatea and Blossom feel different in games. It's a rather tall order, because someone has to manually write all that.

-Username17