Quote from: Doom;379715While you're pretty much correct, if a class can do it, it *can't* be something everyone else can do as well, the level 7 power is a damaging attack, unlike the non-damaging power I was imagining.

It's your opinion then, that powers are delimiters to what a character or class can do?

QuoteIt does, however, set the precedent, so if anyone can do it (much like a wizard picking up a long sword), it needs to be under conditions so desperate and restrictions so limited that nobody in their right mind would do so. You can't even make it a minor action, since then it could theoretically be better than the Rogue special power (two attacks with a minor, even at a penalty, can easily be better than the one standard).

I think we are in agreement here.  Although I don't see it as being significantly similar to a Magic-User with a longsword.  C'est la vie, I don't think that aspect is important enough to spend a lot of time debating.

QuoteSo, using what we know as a precedent for what throwing sand does, here's about the best you can do:

Something along the lines of

Chuckin' Some Sand (Any Class, Attack 1):

Standard Action

Attack: Dexterity - 8 versus Reflex,
Hit: Dexterity modifier damage, target is blinded (save ends, save at +4), and effect ends at the beginning of your next turn.

Now this I find fascinating.  Why aren't all the 'stunts' like throwing sand or tripping in a general, non-class specific powers list?    Maybe Fighters get two or three initial choices and another every three or four levels or something, while everyone else gets one, with another every five levels?  Then you don't have the silliness of waiting six levels to throw sand in someone's eyes.  Keep the effects pretty mild, like your example, and give them a little boost each level.  Say, apply the half-level modifier to the attack (but only to cancel the penalty, no bonus), so at 16th level, you are doing straight Dex vs Ref.  I might end the effect at the end of the player's next turn instead of the beginning, but otherwise, a minor effect that can come in handy, and fits nicely within the rules framework.

QuoteI'm using 'wizard with a longsword' as inspiration, since, by comparison, a low level wizard (of D&D) might be able to use a sword to outfight a goblin, maybe, if he got lucky, but a high level wizard would have no real chance to use a sword against a similarly levelled monster.

That was what I was getting at before: it's probably the most boneheaded move you can think of, even if you are out of spells, but it is possible.

QuoteSimilarly, this 'anyone can do it' version for 4e is iffy against low level monsters, and sheer desperation to try against anything past that. I don't feel rogues of 4e would feel 'cheated' by everyone having this ability, any more than fighters of D&D feeling cheated by wizards theoretically picking up swords.

But a Magic-User picking up a sword, as I mentioned earlier, isn't doing something that only the Fighter can do.  It's doing something the Fighter does far, far better because of the significant penalty, and the other factors, like exceptionally low hit points and often higher than average AC.  Mathematically, unless the Magic-User is stripped of every other weapon they have, a ballpark guess of the damage output would seem to indicate that they would be better off using a staff or even a dagger they are proficient with instead.  The damage is lower, of course, but the odds of hitting are a good deal higher (at least 25%!), so overall output would be, at worst, the same.

QuoteOf course, compare what we need to do here to accomplish this simple thing, as compared to in D&D (wizards get a -5 to hit. Done.).

Exactly.  And people still claim AD&D is sloppy and ad hoc.  

QuoteBut, to answer your question briefly: yeah, it needs to be protected.

I think we agree that the niche needs to be protected, but does throwing sand need to be protected?  In other words, do you think that throwing sand (even with simultaneous damage) is something so central to the definition of a Rogue that it should be protected under the rubric of a power?

Quote from: StormBringer;379721Ok, so it's the combination of damage and effect that makes it a power.  I can grok that.  At your table, then, attacking one round and throwing sand the next is enough of a separation to keep it from infringing on the Rogue's power, or at least puts it outside the realm of 'stunt'.  I dig it.

Yeah. I will say that I think this is a tricky line to walk. In practice, this kind of restriction often means that stunts are less useful than powers, and if you're playing the game as a wargame, people won't use them. If you're playing the kind of game where people embrace suboptimal tactical play, they're much better.

Quote from: Thanlis;379734Yeah. I will say that I think this is a tricky line to walk. In practice, this kind of restriction often means that stunts are less useful than powers, and if you're playing the game as a wargame, people won't use them. If you're playing the kind of game where people embrace suboptimal tactical play, they're much better.

No disagreement there.  I can see that definition being very hair-splitty and in need of constant re-visting on a case-by-case basis.

Quote from: StormBringer;379733I think we agree that the niche needs to be protected, but does throwing sand need to be protected?  In other words, do you think that throwing sand (even with simultaneous damage) is something so central to the definition of a Rogue that it should be protected under the rubric of a power?

Ah, the classic confusion that 4e causes time and again: words have no meaning in 4e.  More than one player in my campaign has gotten screwed up trying to attach actual meanings to the 4e words, it's really quite easy to do.


The problem we have here is, 'throwing sand' and Sand in the Eyes (the level 7 rogue power), are two very different things, that, coincidentally, sound kind of the same. There's lots of that in 4e, such as Magic Missile, Sleep, Fireball, Disintegrate, and others...the names, and the flavor text, are completely meaningless gibberish that sometimes sound familiar, and the game plays better if you treat those words in that fashion.

Sand in the Eyes is a level 7 attack power that rogues have, and it blinds and does damage. You can use it on traps, you can use it on animated statues, you can use it on incorporeal ghosts, you can use it on any 'creature' you like. It sort of sounds like, from the flavor text, that you're throwing sand, but that's just gibberish. Your rogue can use this power in a swimming pool, with no sand for miles around, and he can even do it while restrained, or in the stomach of a purple worm, or inside a gelatinous cube, for that matter.

'throwing sand', on the other hand, as a house-ruled power I made up, and thus I would follow up with a house rule that it would only work where it would make some sort of sense. I can't do that with character powers: all powers are supposed to always work at all times...it's an important design consideration in 4e, although the designers sometimes get a little confused.

So, no, 'throwing sand' doesn't need to be protected, but you can't give all characters a power that's just as good as a 'special' power that one class gets, other than the approved method.

The 'approved method', of course, is to give all classes very similar powers.

For example:

Crushing Smash (strength versus AC, target pushed one), a fighter power.

Arcanic Shove (int versus AC, target pushed one), a wizard power.

Dextrous Trip (dex versus AC, target pushed one), a rogue power.

Wise Tomfoolery (wisdome versus AC, target pushed one), a cleric power.

Etc, etc. I didn't bother statting these legitmate powers out or writing flavor text, such as "Your brute strength pushes your opponent back" and "You agilely entangle your opponent's legs, causing him to withdraw.", but I'm sure you could get the trend well enough.

That's just flavor text, however, and should not be taken to be meaningful in any real sense (eg, Dextrous Trip would work on a creature with no legs, despite the text).

So, "Sand in the Eyes" needs protection (but you can certainly find comparable powers in the other classes that are similar), but actually throwing actual sand? Not so much.

Quote from: Doom;379747The 'approved method', of course, is to give all classes very similar powers.

Yep. Try to maintain flavor, of course. There are a lot of level 1 at-wills that push people; there's a distinct difference between the wizard's close burst that pushes Wis modifier squares and the fighter's melee attack that pushes one monster one square and allows you to shift into the vacated square, let alone the avenger's melee/ranged attack that allows you to hit one enemy and push a different enemy 2 squares.

Difference: the fighter needs to stay next to his opponent, so his power enables that. The wizard is all about AoEs, so he can affect a lot of monsters at once. The avenger is themed for isolating enemies, so his power allows him to help keep one enemy close while other enemies are at a distance.

They broke that principle for the "I hit you, then move back a square and pull you with me" power, which exists in identical form for at least three classes, but c'est la vie.

Quote from: Doom;379747Ah, the classic confusion that 4e causes time and again: words have no meaning in 4e.  More than one player in my campaign has gotten screwed up trying to attach actual meanings to the 4e words, it's really quite easy to do.

I was ignoring that for the moment.  

QuoteSo, "Sand in the Eyes" needs protection (but you can certainly find comparable powers in the other classes that are similar), but actually throwing actual sand? Not so much.

I see what you are saying, then, Sand in the Eyes is different than a stunt to throw sand in someone's eyes, because the latter would actually involve throwing sand in someone's eyes.

Quote from: StormBringer;379753I see what you are saying, then, Sand in the Eyes is different than a stunt to throw sand in someone's eyes, because the latter would actually involve throwing sand in someone's eyes.

Heh, yes.

If I were playing a rogue, and I took that power, and I wanted it to be something other than throwing sand... I'd probably rename it, which is encouraged.

Quote from: Thanlis;379754Heh, yes.

If I were playing a rogue, and I took that power, and I wanted it to be something other than throwing sand... I'd probably rename it, which is encouraged.

"Tricksy Hobbitses" if you are playing a halfling, perhaps?  

Quote from: Doom;379747Ah, the classic confusion that 4e causes time and again: words have no meaning in 4e.  More than one player in my campaign has gotten screwed up trying to attach actual meanings to the 4e words, it's really quite easy to do.

*blink blink*

See... I'll never be able to accept that kind of premise. It's really like talking different languages. The logic of 4e is so completely far out there to me, it's unbelievable.

Quote from: StormBringer;379712Except this 'improvisation' negates a listed power of the Rogue, a mid-level(ish) one at that.

Hey, thanks for the great example of internally inconsistent contradictions in 4e!

But it's not. My version (the improvised ruling) isn't as powerful as any attack-- it's merely an improvised skill use in combat, takes up an entire standard action.. and all it does is allow someone a chance to escape. There's no damage. Plus there has to be some sand. Kind of a cool getaway tactic if you get really pressed.

To Doom: have you tried using minions to "Aid Other" in combat?

I meant to run through some 15th level combats using a bunch of PCs from the link AM provided and some monsters.

The plan was to run through on a round by round basis determining average damage (so with 2 strikes doing d10+4 damage at 11 to hit then average damage is 9.5 per round etc etc ). To maximise damage you trigger encounter powers on round 1 then use at wills or standard hits.

Real life intervened and I have been given the job of finding a new au-pair instead (its tricky as you can't just pick the hottest one, you need to find a hot one that is good with kids and isn't so obviously hot that your wife looks at the photo and gives you that look that says "in your dreams")

So I started looking at it again tonight but having caught up on the post I am pretty sure it would make no difference and since it would like as not take at least 23 hours of my life ....

I will make some initial observations.

If we take an average damage per hit of 25 and a 50% chance to hit but give 2 PCs 2 strikes a round then our average damage per round is 87.5 (7 chances at 50% = 3.5 x 25). If you have 5 creatures with 140 hp which from the numbers seems about right then very simply it will take 8 rounds to kill them ( (140x5)/87.5= 8 ).
A fight that lasts 8 rounds would seem to take a minimum of 48 minutes (1 min per PC and 1 min for the DM = 6x8) but 2 hours is far from exceptional (2.5 mins for a DM to act with 5 creatures is only 30 seconds per creature, and 2.5 mins for a PC to make an optimal choice from a slew of powers is also far from outrageous expecially if we consider careful movement and questions about the environment this would give a 15 minute round for a 2 hour combat.)
I think to act in the really rapid method would be a return to the you roll I roll you roll I roll we used to see in  1e when the players were bored or the DM was shit. So I have to assume that the "truth" lies in between someplace.

Now the monster stuff is different as the monsters deal less damage say 15 (looking at AMs examples  15 damage each per round is the average, 2d10+4=15, 2d8+6=15). Average damage a round would be just 37.5 (15x5x50%)
The PCs only have average of 100hp but they do get healing surges so really we can say easily 125 (and you could easily say 2 surges per combat or add second wnd or whatever).
It would take 17 rounds  ((125x5)/37.5 = 16.6 rounds) for the Monsters to kill the PCs without using special powers. To me the specials on the monsters don't look like they would do much beyond increasing the change to hit/damage we could generous and fudge this to say a 50% damage increase. I actually suspect the PCs powers would in effect cancel the monsters powers and the effect would just be more rounds...
Just from these numbers it does appear that the PCs are not going to be heavily challenged by a 'level' encounter unless the DM uses complex tactics which adds time.
I know this is all irrelevant now and the discussion have moved on/degenerated into childing name calling or whatever

Reading AMs actual play example it does strike me that AM is surely playing in a game where killing the monsters is not required. He has noted that his groups use other victory conditions like the elite fleeing after it is bloodied or even handwaving the dregs once the big bad has gone down.

Now to my untrained eye it is this more creative use of the rules that keeps his games moving whereas Doom's adherence to playing combats out, and possibly trying to increase the challenge level which he percieves as weak through tactics, is the real difference between a 4.5 hour game having three combats and a singel combat lasting 2.5 hours.

I suspect that Thanlis's and Doom's discussion over minutia would as Doom suggests end up with a very marginal difference in average damage dealt and therefore to the number of rounds. So its th eplay style and the unwritten rules that are makign the difference.

Sorry to dredge this back up but I said I would look at it and I accept this is a flawed and simplified model but I think the underlying logic is sound. The ideal solution would be to plug it all into a programme and run a 1000 battles to get some genuine numbers. However, I do have to find that au pair .....

Quote from: Abyssal Maw;379797To Doom: have you tried using minions to "Aid Other" in combat?

Sure; actually I use them more to trigger saving throws, that's often bigger than a +2 to hit. Alas, many powers are 'screwed until the end of player's turn', totally screwing up the whole point of the new save mechanic.

It isn't that minions are useless (just double damage and triple their numbers...still weak, but minions, after all)...but every class has so many AOE or multitarget powers that you need dozens of minions to have any meaningful number alive after two rounds. That fight with 80 minions (16 streaming in at a time from four different directions), really demonstrated just how messed up the design is.

Seriously, if minions are perfect, why did DMG2 change the rules for them? 6 per level instead of 4, is rather big change after all. If there was any doubt about their limitations, WoTC would have gone a smaller increment (eg, 5).

Sooner or later, wotc will realize "3 + char level*tier" is closer to how many are necessary to be comparable to an actual monster, in usefulness, threat, or durability.

Quote from: jibbajibba;379835If we take an average damage per hit of 25 and a 50% chance to hit but give 2 PCs 2 strikes a round then our average damage per round is 87.5 (7 chances at 50% = 3.5 x 25). If you have 5 creatures with 140 hp which from the numbers seems about right then very simply it will take 8 rounds to kill them ( (140x5)/87.5= 8 ).

Level 15 PCs are hitting level 15 monsters at a 65% clip, FWIW. So 7 chances at 65% is 4.55 * 25, or 113.75. And it's down from 8 rounds to 6 rounds -- time dropped by 25% due to a 15% increase in hit chance. This is why all those little differences are important.

Equal level encounters aren't terribly challenging in isolation. +2, +3 level can get more interesting. Depends on how you build it and how you run it.

Very minor comment: lots of minions will tend to produce flanking and hence combat advantage (+2) so will skew up enemy to hit rolls. I doubt this will meaningfully affect damage output (60% hit/50% hit = 1.2x as much damage)

Had a look at this controversial sand-chucking power as well

Sand in the Eyes Rogue Attack 7
You scoop up a handful of sand or dirt or pebbles, strike your foe, and throw the grit in his face to blind him.
Encounter * Martial, Weapon
Standard Action Melee weapon
Requirement: You must be wielding a light blade.
Target: One creature
Attack: Dexterity vs. Reflex
Hit: 1[W] + Dexterity modifier damage, and the target is blinded until the end of your next turn.

The funniest thing here is that 'you must be wielding a light blade' to throw sand in someone's eyes.
The whole 'just ignore the fluff text' comment sheds some light on this, but yeah. Its like someone once said about World of Synnibarr; 'Its written in a language which is indistinguishable from English but which is not English'. i.e. 'Words mean what we want them to mean, no more and no less'.

One of many, many, things some folks miss despite being reminded repeatedly is it isn't just bonus vs AC, or a certain amount of damage per hit for one particular character.

There are so many factors that one can always point at one certain thing and say there's a 2% discrepancy...there are too many calculations, making it best to think things through all the way without squinting so hard at the moss on one side of one tree.

You want to move the expected damage up? You can, but there are diminishing returns. Hitting for 100 points of damage, when the monster only have 5 left, doesn't matter so much, and that wasted effort becomes more of an issue as the damage goes up, reducing the effect. You can do this with darn near everything.

That said, a universal 65% chance to hit is high, even for optimized characters...why would weapon expertise give a +2 at level 15 if characters already hit at 55% at level 15 without it, eh? Or is the implication here that WotC was totally wrong about the math being off a bit, and Weapon Expertise is a feat that was totally unnecessary?

But, even being off by that much is still mostly irrelevant.

So in the end, make lots of estimations, realize with so many estimates that errors tend to cancel out, and acknowledge that, in the end, you'll probably be off 5% one way or the other.

One guy says 8 rounds, another guy says 6, both are probably missing details...once again, split the difference, and hey, we're back at 7 rounds, kinda wonder who said that first. Keep in mind, WotC designed this game under the assumption that monsters would only live long enough for 5 attacks on average...go and see for yourself that if a monster dies on rounds 3, 4, 5, 6, and 7, the average lifespan of a monster is....wait for it...wait for it....five rounds.

That said, I concede I'm probably playing by the rules too much (as are lots of folks, apparently), and probably should adopt AM's technique of having the fights ending once the outcome is certain. Of course, in nearly all fights, the outcome is certain before the first die is rolled, but something along those lines to make it closer to 2 hours of grinding instead of 2.5 hours.