Quote from: Doom;887518Actually, by the time the characters reach this level, there are quite a few ways to attack that don't require a Standard action, and quite a few ways to take more than one attacking action a round.

Of course..................... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Quote from: Sommerjon;887528Of course..................... :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes: :rolleyes:

Exactly!

You really need examples, or do you need an eye doctor?

Quote from: Doom;887540Exactly!

You really need examples, or do you need an eye doctor?

If you make a claim, back it up with evidence!

I normally wouldn't care about these flaming exchanges, but Daztur is a stand up guy, and these 4e volleys have been done to death. (As the "OSR death squads" can attest... /cue inside joke)

Could we all please unclench our sphincters and stick to the topic on hand in a productive manner?

I am sure all of you are the truest of Scotsmen and 4e Players, so take a bow and carry it outside onto another topic if you must.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887263Which they had for 3e, and for 2e, and for 1e, and for Red Box, ad nauseum. m Edition Wars never really stop, and started the moment someone stopped using the little brown books.  If you don't believe me, watch Gronan go on and on about how he still uses them.

The only thing I truly had issues with in 4e, other than flavour (I have a hard time reconciling 'Daily Attacks' for martial characters that use their muscles/bodies as a 'power source') was the Ranger Class with it's ease of multiple attacks and reaction powers.  (I remember once being a Battlerager fighter, unable to actually get into the battle, so all I did was throw a rock at the bad guys every round, which triggered the Ranger to unleash something like 3? attacks.  And that's on top of the basic 5 he had each round.)

If we could somehow tone it down, that would have been nice.

true i wasent trying to down play the older edition wars but to me the 3.x vs 4e war seemed especially hot compared to what i had heard of the older edition wars

Quote from: Cave Bear;887422Shit taste detected.

dont let him get to you hes jest like that

Quote from: Opaopajr;887548I normally wouldn't care about these flaming exchanges, but Daztur is a stand up guy, and these 4e volleys have been done to death. (As the "OSR death squads" can attest... /cue inside joke)

Could we all please unclench our sphincters and stick to the topic on hand in a productive manner?

I am sure all of you are the truest of Scotsmen and 4e Players, so take a bow and carry it outside onto another topic if you must.

Yeah, should've expected this thread to sink into the gutter. But this is the only forum I've ever seen a civil discussion of Gamergate and Trump so I held out a bit of hope. I guess people here are only chill about everything except RPGs.

Edit: thanks for your excellent breakdown a few pages back. Will hit it point by point when I'm not on my cell while camping in the woods.

As Justin Alexander points out upthread the biggest single thing wrong with 4ed that is bad implementation rather than 4ed having design goals I don't like is how the system rewards people shooting their loads at the start of the fight and the fight just slowly petering out after that.

For 0ed a short bloody beatdown is perfect but for 4ed what you want is the fights building up to a climax with the dailies ENDING a fight rather than opening it. My idea would be tying more conditions to dailies (can only be used if your buddy is down or another one that can only be used if you're out of healing surges) to get the right sort of pacing but my 4ed knowledge isn't close to being strong enough to see how that'd work in practice.

Also 4ed works so much better with fewer harder combats which doesn't make it a bad game but does make it a bad fit for how I usually DM DnD.

Quote from: Cave Bear;887543If you make a claim, back it up with evidence!

Fine.

I claim that Wizards of the Coast is an actual company. It exists, here's the wiki entry..

I claim it printed books for a game, commonly referred to as "Fourth Edition D&D". You can still find these books for sale on E-bay.

I already put it away, because I didn't realize the level of idiocy that would spring up here, but in this book you'll find something called "action points"

Here's the pronunciation for action points: [ˈakSH(ə)n] [points]

A first level character (by "first level" I'm referring to a newly created character in what is called a "role playing game") generally begins each day with an action point, and gains more during play.

An action point allows an extra action during a combat round (play in 4e is generally done in turns, each turn often referred to as a "combat round).

A player using an action point can get an EXTRA (by this I mean, additional, one more) action.

So, a player can take a standard action, then use (that is, activate) an action point, to take an additional action.

As this occurs at 1st level, all that remains is to show that 1st level occurs before 11th level.

If you inspect a number line, you'll see 1 lies to the "left" (will you allow me to use the word "left" without a precise definition?) of 10; this is the very definition of "less than".

Crap, I see that the number line I linked to stops at 10.

Let us recall we use a "base 10" numbering system
. By "eleven" I'm referring to 10 + 1.

Shit.

Quote from: Christopher Brady;887474It's a pejorative term used to infer pedophilia.

Thank you! I had never heard that term used before Lolitas.

Quote from: Omega;8874851:  The main problem was the designers saw fit to insult you for not wanting to do the total random chargen. That irked people.

I greatly enjoy random chargen, but I don't understand WTF designers don't offer optional rules for chargen to offer the olive branch to those who want more control and those who want more random.

Quote from: Omega;887485But then the whole game was schizophrenic in what it wanted to be.

I agree, even as a fan. There's a strange line with gonzo. Paranoia 1e straddled it without becoming a complete cartoon, but the 4e GW RAW had some strange cartoonish gonzo and significant tone issues.

However, GW has a history of that. The pics in GW 1e of bunnies with guns, Wisconsin badgers and elephants with tiny wings were very silly for what was usually a brutal game.

Quote from: Soylent Green;887489What I dislike more of GW 4e is that the goofiness is a lie. It's just gloss, a veneer. The game itself is still D&D and is all about careful tactics. If you play the game in the goofy spirit in which it is presented you will end up dead very quickly.

Agreed. I found GW combat to be faster and deadlier, so tactics were even more important - which was why I like it. But the cartoon aspects are jarring which is why they are the first stuff I nuke.

Quote from: Daztur;887579I don't like is how the system rewards people shooting their loads at the start of the fight and the fight just slowly petering out after that.

Agreed. This is where 13th Age's Escalation die is a great addition. Players have to choose whether to burn powers early or wait until they can get a good bonus to increase their chance for success.

That might achieve your goal of dailies used to end fights, because it would make sense to wait until you have a +4 bonus (or more) before risking the daily.

Quote from: Spinachcat;887586Agreed. I found GW combat to be faster and deadlier, so tactics were even more important - which was why I like it. But the cartoon aspects are jarring which is why they are the first stuff I nuke.

Does core 4e's combat advance as fast as it does in 4e GW?

I did a quick conversion and comparison and GW characters are hitting the same ACs as a AD&D fighter 10% more often vs the same AC. If the progression had advanced to level 20 then by then the GW character would be hitting 20% more often vs the same AC. They also have alot more HP. 12+Con score+5 per level thereafter. A level 10 GW can have as much HP as a level 20 AD&D fighter.

I never played 4e GW past 5th level so I can't speak for higher level play, but I definitely felt that it had a lower "whiff" factor. Both PCs and monsters seemed to be hitting more often, but they have higher HPs than AD&D and a higher damage output.

Quote from: Justin Alexander;887397The result was a systemic bias towards combats that shot their load and then... just continued happening for some reason for another hour.

Jesus. I've never had an RPG skirmish combat run longer than twenty minutes in the last 20 years.

Quote from: Doom;887469My goodness, did my memory fail again? I could have swore there was an at-will power that had a 55% chance of blocking all damage.

Oh wait, here it is, funny nobody else could find it:

Iron Defense    Iron Guardian Utility 12

Your skin becomes as hard as iron, allowing you to shrug off even the deadliest blows.
 At-Will + Psionic
 Standard Action     Personal
 Effect: Until the end of your next turn, roll a d20 whenever you take damage. On a 10 or higher, the damage is reduced to 0. Otherwise the damage is halved.

Now toss this in with all the other abilities that shift/displace/ignore damage...

Anyway, here's a discussion of *just* battlemind powers at first level, I don't even want to know how many pages it is.

Just to keep track of all this is *nuts*...now put 4 other players around the table. Good luck keeping track:

... how well the battlemind can defend her party mates. In this second article on the new psionic defender I'll take a look at how well she can defend herself.

As mentioned in the prior article, a battlemind  starts out knowing how to use scale armor and a heavy shield. This would give a starting battlemind AC 19.  You could take  Armor Proficiency (Plate) for a single point gain in AC, but that requires Strength and Constitution 15.

For a Con/Str, Con/Wis, or Con/Cha bonus race, using the beginning ability score array of 16, 15, 14, 11, 10, 8 would wind up 18, 16, 15, 11, 10, 8. These are decent level stats if you are willing to forgo a starting Con 20, or Con 18 + Wis or Cha 18 array.

A tertiary Strength based battlemind build is not as unintuitive as you might think. Aside from opening up plate armor use, it helps to ameliorate a semi-defense related deficiency of the battlemind – opportunity attacks.

Unless Strength is boosted or one of the Melee Training feats are chosen, the battlemind is restricted to rather lackluster OAs. With blurred step's limitations outlined in my previous post, there is very little a non-OA optimized battlemind can do to deter enemies from simply walking away unscathed.

Simply put, without a lot of forethought and careful building, the battlemind is not very adept at opportunity attacks.

Sorry about the side trip into OA-land. But the flaw in the build needed to be addressed. Back to self defense!

Hit points are pretty good for a battlemind. With Constitution the primary stat, you know you'll be  tough. At 1st level you get 15 + Constitution, then 6 per level afterward. A typical battlemind with an 18 Con will have 33 hit points, 16 bloodied value, a surge value of 8, and 13 surges per day. If you wanted to burn a feat on Toughness you could be looking at 38 hp, 19 bloodied, 9 surge value, and 13 surges.

There are two encounter powers in the class feature Psionic Study, a battlemind may choose one of them.

Battle resilience is a Wisdom based defensive free action that gives 3 + Wisdom modifier resists all until the end of your next turn. It triggers off an attack hitting or missing you for the first time in an encounter.

Speed of thought is a Charisma based offensive positioning free action which allows you to move 3 + charisma modifier when initiative is rolled for the encounter. This can be used in a surprise round. Obviously it is very effective at getting the battlemind into the fray early. Considering Dexterity is a low priority for most defenders, initiative modifiers are usually low as well. This power will help overcome the slow and lumbering defender stereotype.

However, as this article is (mostly) about the battleminds personal defense, we'll look more closely at battle resilience.

Battle resilience suffers from some of the ambiguity of other battlemind powers. It is a free action with a trigger. A free action takes no time (or very little time) and can be taken on your or another combatant's turn. Thus, strictly speaking, as soon as the attack is made against the battlemind, she can use battle resilience.

The ambiguity of this depends on how your DM rules free actions and where in the resolution of the triggering attack you may use the power and gain the resistance.

Battle resilience is usable ONLY on the first attack against you during an encounter. Thus its usefulness is already severely limited.

If your DM allows free actions at any time, you could wait until you see if the attack hits and trigger it before the damage is dealt. Thus you save yourself 3 + Wis mod initial damage. I feel this is the intent of this power – to absorb some of an opening attack's damage and provide possible defense against further damage until the end of your next turn.

If your DM only allows the power to trigger after the attack is resolved battle resilience becomes somewhat less useful. It can still help soak up further attack damage until the end of your next turn, but that initial hit still gets through fully. And it is quite possible no other damaging attacks are sent your way before the power ends.

To muddle things even more, your DM's ruling on what constitutes an attack can affect whether you avoid any damage from the initial attack. Let's say you have a Wis mod of +4 giving you a resistance 7 all. Then a power or ability with multiple to hit and damage rolls are used against you –  claw/claw/bite for 7/12/14 damage. If your DM rules an attack is a single d20 roll, you would take 0/5/7  damage. If your DM rules all d20 rolls included in a power are considered one attack, then you would take 0/12/14 damage. A difference of 12 damage vs. 26 is significant.

You may want to discuss with your DM what he considers an attack.

The battlemind's four current at-will standard attack powers each have a defensive aspect to them, actually giving the defender some minimal (mostly) single target controller ability, too. All of them are Constitution vs. AC and does 1[W] + Constitution modifier damage on a hit, unaugmented.

Demon dance does psychic damage opposed to the rest of the level 1 at-wills' untyped damage.  It also imposes a -5 penalty to opportunity attack rolls until the end of your next turn. Positioning just got a little less hazardous for you and your allies with an effective +5 to your AC.

Augment 1 is more situational by removing the target's threatening reach. there are not too many baddies out there with it, but when you do run into one, this could be useful.

Augment 2 does more damage (2[W] + Con mod) and the target cannot make opportunity attacks until the end of your next turn. More easy positioning when needed.

Iron fist grants the battlemind resist all equal to the battlemind's Wisdom modifier. Less damage taken equal more health retained and more hits able to be withstood. If you have someone in the group who offers THP, paired with resist all you could be taking little to no damage from most attacks. Resist all is also great against ongoing damage. Just remember, damage resistance does not stack; only the higher damage resistance is effective. So if you have someone in the group who offers damage resistance, this ability is less useful.

Augment 1 changes the resist to fire resist 5 + Wisdom modifier. More situational, but useful.

Augment 2 just does more damage,  2[W] + constitution modifier.

Bull's strength pushes the target 1 square. This is okay for some positioning options, but it is limited. A slide would have been better. Pushing your target away is contrary to a defender's role. you really want those suckers focused on you, and within weapon range. If you push the enemy away, it is like giving it a free shift back from you. This has minor use, but overall is counter-productive. (Yes, I realize you do not have to push the target, but then you are making a glorified basic attack.)

Augment 1 increases your reach by 1 for this attack. Now it's getting more useful. In tight quarters and something is harrying your squishies? No problem, augment bull's strength with a power point, reach right past the baddies surrounding you, and shove the annoying bugger right out your squishy's grill!

Augment 2 makes this attack a blast 3. It is against all creatures, not just enemies, so you need to take some care your allies are not in the way. This is an effective minion clearer as well as an Oh Sh!t attack. It still pushes any target hit 1 square. If your group lacks good minion control or other AoE damage, this is practical, if limited in use by available power points.

Twisted Eye gives the target a penalty to attack rolls equal to the number of your allies adjacent to it on hit. The penalty lasts until the end of your next turn. Two factors play into this power: how many mêlée allies you have and how willing they are to position themselves properly for this to be effective. Melee light partys will see less effect from this than those with at least 3+ mêlée, or at least ranged willing to move into harm's way. This becomes very effective in heavier mêlée groups against single targets, especially élite and solo targets.

Augment 1 allows this at-will to be used in place of a basic mêlée attack. I wish this were part of the base power and did not cost a power point. But, in later levels, with more than the initial 2 power points to spend, this might become more useful.

Augment 2 also blinds the target until the end of your next turn. This is actually pretty great. The target is now granting combat advantage, everyone has total concealment from it, and it cannot flank.

Whirling defense marks the target until the end of your next turn. Wow! You could conceivably have THREE (!!!) marked targets at once with continued use (and hits) of this power (and augmenting battlemind's demand to mark two others). Useless against minions as a hit will pretty much explode them.

Augment 1 boost your mind spike damage by your Charisma modifier if you use it before the end of your next turn. Gambling one power point a marked target adjacent to you will attack someone besides you is risky. It depends on how the DM plays the marked creatures. If he often ignores marks to attack others, then it might be worthwhile.

Augment 2 turns this into a close burst 1. Another nice minion sweeper or a way to get a group of enemies focused on you for a round. The biggest drawback of this is mind spike is an immediate reaction, so even if you are able to punish one mark ignoring bugger, the others can pretty much do so with impunity –  aside from the -2 penalty to their attack rolls.

Which two would I take at first level, you ask?

Demon dance and twisted eye have some nice synergy. You can set your allies up to position themselves with less hazard adjacent to your main target, then impose a hefty attack roll penalty on it. I also like the blinding aspect of twisted eye's augment 2. But this combo really needs at least 3 mêlée in the party to be effective.

I would probably take iron fist for the resist all (especially if paired with a THP tossing leader), twisted eye for the possible attack roll penalty and to blind a target to help set up a nova, or whirling defense for the added mark and possible minion sweeper use.

The level 1 daily disciplines also have some defensive uses to them, though I will not go into as deep of detail as i did with the at-wills. (Go buy the PHB3, you mooching buggers!)

Allies to enemies – psychic damage, and a forced mêlée basic attack? This does not sound as bad as it might. It all depends on how much damage the BBEG or his henchmen are capable of doing with that basic mêlée attack. Thus it is a bit situational. Not a horrible choice, though.

Aspect of elevated harmony – self-healing and the ability to gain some THP off augmented at-wills. Nice if the party lacks sufficient healing. Even better when you start getting more than 2 power points. Otherwise pass.

Psionic anchor – teleport the target to a square next to me when it ends its turn? Yo-yo sticky. The target can still move away and attack others, this just makes it annoying to do so. If you use it on a non-marked target it increases in value.

Steel unity strike – Why does this make me think of Jimmy Hoffa? This does more damage than the other three level 1 dailies and you go into a stance. A very special stance which allows you to make a 2[W] + Con mod damage Constitution vs AC attack against any marked adjacent enemy that moves without shifting. Can you say non-gimped opportunity attack? A decent choice if you want better OA's on your marked baddie and do not have the Strength tertiary build....

Seriously, this is overboard.

Ok, all of that right there? Thats why I'll never play 4th edition. Not whats actually said, I got maybe two paragraphs in before my eyes glazed over and I started daydreaming about unicorns fighting cheetahs.

Seriously, I just want to roleplay. Roll some dice when there's an element of chance, and have a blast with friends while acting out characters who are nothing like ourselves in a fantasy world.

Quote from: TristramEvans;887615Ok, all of that right there? Thats why I'll never play 4th edition. Not whats actually said, I got maybe two paragraphs in before my eyes glazed over and I started daydreaming about unicorns fighting cheetahs.

I think the unicorns will win, especially the curvaceous ones from Africa and India.

(Yeah, that level of class analysis is a bit esoteric, isn't it?)

Quote from: TristramEvans;887610Jesus. I've never had an RPG skirmish combat run longer than twenty minutes in the last 20 years.

It made me want to murder my own face. My biggest problem with D&D4 was undoubtedly the pointlessly dissociated mechanics, but it was the bloated and poorly designed combat system that completely killed it for me.

Quote from: Doom;887424Really not worth my time to look it up...but flipping through the rules a bit, I see the years have shaded my memory a bit. It's not saving throws, it's effects, hence my reference to "all those status effects." So, not saves, mea culpa, but effects.

Oh yeah. Those are all over the map. And they get even worse when you add in the purely situational ones. (Like you're currently getting +3 to hit somebody, but it'll be +4 if an ally moves one step closer to you.)

Quote from: Batman;887507Also, and this is what I was talking about earlier, why didn't anyone ever change the monsters' HP mid-combat?

If I had been captured by terrorists and forced to run 4E because otherwise they would murder my mother, I'd probably start doing stuff like that, too. I just found it easier to give up on the badly broken game and go play something else.

QuoteMost combats in 4e aren't throw-a-way ones. They're not intended to be. You can do it, sure with minions, but if the combat isn't going to be significant or important, why are you doing it? Or if you like more sand-boxy style campaigns where there's a possible fight around every bend in the road, use minions for the most part with LOTs of them and then occasionally throw in a big-bad for more effect. One of the things I hated in v3.5 were combats that took 10 mintues and our 6th level characters got like 25 XP for killing some rats or Kobolds. At that point, getting out dice and fighting really isn't even worth the break in role-play for some measily XP and copper coins.

4th Edition was made for players like you: It caters to a very, very narrow range of experiences (which are apparently the only experiences you're interested in) and it benefits greatly from GMs who are willing to just ignore the rulebook whenever the game's shitty design is causing a problem.

QuoteMy 4e combats never took longer than an hour.

Well... yes. You just got done saying that you didn't use the actual rules and would modify them on the fly specifically to prevent that from happening, so that's unsurprising.

We're literally in a thread about fixing 4E's problems. Your endless litany of, "THE PROBLEMS DON'T EXIST BECAUSE THE GM CAN JUST IGNORE ALL OF THEM!" is the worst kind of rule zero fallacy.