# The Gaming Den

Welcome to the Gaming Den.

Skip to content

## 4E Power Build: Missile Sword Ranger

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

Post Reply

- Print view

3 posts • Page 1 of 1

Lago PARANOIA
  Invincible Overlord
  Posts: 10555
  Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

### 4E Power Build: Missile Sword Ranger

- Quote

Post by Lago PARANOIA » Thu Dec 03, 2009 5:18 am

Genasi Ranger|Wizard/Battle Engineer/Demigod
Starting Stats: STR: 18 CON: 11 DEX: 15 INT: 16 WIS: 10 CHA: 8
All level-ups go into strength and intelligence
Feats:
1) Leather Armor Proficiency
2) Weapon Proficiency: Zulaat
4) Arcane Implement Proficiency: Heavy Blades
6) Weapon Expertise: Heavy Blades
8) Weapon Focus: Heavy Blades
10) Student of Artifice
11) Dual-Implement Spellcaster --> Lasting Frost at level 12
12) Wintertouched
14) Shocking Flame --> Prime Punisher at level 16
16) Hybrid Talent: Prime Shot
18) Called Shot
20) Shocking Flame
21) Arcane Mastery
22) Heavy Blade Mastery
24) Two-Weapon Fighting --> Extra Manifestation at 26
26) Dual Manifestation
28) Two-Weapon Fighting
30) Two-Weapon Opening
Magical Items
1) +1 Leather Armor
2) Siberys Shard of Lasting Cold (Heroic)
3) +1 Frost Zuulat
4) +1 Amulet of Protection (save extra money)
5) +1 Shadowdance Drowmesh
6) Iron Armbands of Power (Heroic)
7) Circlet of Indomitability
8) +2 Frost Zuulat
9) +2 Cloak of Distortion
10) +2 Shadowdance Snakeskin Armor
11) Gloves of Ice (Paragon)
12) Siberys Shard of Lasting Cold (Paragon)
13) +3 Subtle Zuulat
14) Amulet of Protection, 2x Salve of Power
15) +3 Shadowdance Feyleather Armor
16) Iron Armbands of Power (Paragon)
17) 2x Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lords, 3x Salve of Power
18) +4 Subtle Zuulat
19) +4 Timeless Locket
20) +4 Shadowdance Feyleather Armor
21) Gloves of Ice (Epic)
22) Siberys Shard of Lasting Cold
23) +5 Subtle Zulaat
24) +5 Timeless Locket
25) +5 Shadowdance Anathema Armor
26) Violet Solitare
27) Iron Armbands of Power (Epic) (pocket extra gold for level 29)
28) +6 Subtle Zulaat
29) Shadow Band, +6 Amulet of Protection
30) +6 Shadowdance Starleather Armor
At Wills 1: Twin-Strike, Scorching Burst (Retrained to Magic Missile at level 5)
Encounter 1: Off-Hand Strike
Daily 1: Jaws of the Wolf (Retrained to Wizard's Fury at level 5)
Utility 2: Bending Branch (Retrained to Shield at level 30)
Encounter 3: Maze of Mirrors (Retrained to Disruptive Strike at level 7)
Daily 5: Spitting Cobra Stance
Utility 6: Wizard's Escape
Encounter 7: Thunder Cage
Daily 9: Attacks on the Run
Utility 10: Repelling Shield
Enc 13: Off-Hand Diversion (Replaces Off-Hand Strike)
Daily 15: Blade Cascade (Replaces Attacks on the Run)
Utility 16: Displacement
Enc 17: None
Daily 19: None
Utility 22: Stoneskin (Retrained to Forest Ghost at level 29)
Enc 23: Nonchalant Collapse (Replaces Off-Hand Diversion)
Daily 25: Summon Abyssal Horde (Replaces Blade Cascade)
Enc 27: Steal Time (Replaces Thunder Cage)
Daily 29: Follow-Up Blow (Replaces Spitting Cobra Stance)
Summary:
Levels 1-6: You are quite a bit weaker than a 'real' Ranger at this point, especially at level 1. The Zulaat will keep your AC current with a 'Real' ranger until around level 16, but you have Wizard hit points due to the stupid-ass hybrid rules. Frost Weaponry with a Siberys Shard is better than anything else you can get because it does an extra +1 damage. I really hate 4E right now. Level 5, however, is when things go great. You have Shadowform Armor, which lets you use ranged attacks without provoking OAs. With Wizard's Fury and Spitting Cobra Stance in your arsenal your damage experiences a huge spike, making you slightly stronger than a 'real' ranger. Level 6 you can breathe quite a bit easier with Wizard's Escape, which will make up for the deficit in defenses.
Levels 7-11: Iron Armbands of Power are a must. They don't do anything for your magic missile, sadly, but they're gold for everything else. These are pretty quiet levels; you gain a second minor action/IA attack and you get Thunder Cage, which is much more useful to you. Gloves of Ice don't do anything for you but they will very shortly. Attacks on the Run is beastly, doing up to 6W (or 12d4) damage and throwing in a move to boot. Your multiclass feat is mainly used for the AC bonus; the healing is useless to you. At level 11 you pick up Battle Engineer which has a mostly-unusuable encounter attack power and a very nice extra action power.
Levels 12-16: Your damage goes up something fierce and will continue to remain ahead of almost all of the other players for the rest of the game. Salves of Power are a must and they're going to be used to replenish your Wizard's Fury power. Blade Cascade replaces Attacks on the Run, since unless you're doing the one-encounter workday thing the other two powers will do more damage. Off-Hand diversion replaces Off-Hand Strike. But the biggest change to note is the level 12 encounter power Fleeting Dweomer; it adds extra damage of a type you want equal to your intelligence modifier for the rest of the encounter. Which is going to be Cold damage. You then switch over to a Subtle Zulaat which you will be using for the rest of the damn game for more damage. You get even more Salves of Power and keep your Iron Ring of the Dwarf Lord; you really don't have the healing surges to spare and these will help.
Levels 17-21: This is where being a Genasi starts to pay off. Shocking Flame gives us a +4 additional damage, making us the most damaging race for sure. Demigod is picked for the attack and damage bonus, but you can pick Archmage if you'd like; they end up about the same. You pick up Arcane Mastery right away. This is when you start regularly using Wizard's Fury and Spitting Cobra Stance together at once for an even greater volume of attacks. Displacement helps out even more but sadly not as much as Wizard's Fury did.
Levels 22-30: For a lot of characters their damage gain starts to drop at these levels because epic destinies by and large suck. You're still backlogged on feats and powers so your damage continues to rise sharpy. Nothing is chosen at all for levels 17 and 19. That's right. I hate 4E so much right now. Level 22 gives us Stoneskin, one of the better utilities. Notice how if the game would let me I would not pick up a single Ranger utility nor would I pick up a single wizard encounter attack power. I hate 4E so much right now. But anyway, stoneskin gets upgraded to Forest Ghost at level 29, when you have a Shadow Band; this makes you permanently invisible for the rest of the encounter. Then the level 2 power gets retrained to Shield, which is STILL better than every other ranger utility power of any level except for Master of the Hunt and Forest Ghost. I hate 4E so much right now. Oh, yeah, Violet Solitaires are a must. They will easily give you an action point almost every encounter with the attacks you'll be making. And look, you got them just in time for Abyssal Horde, too. This power is even more ridiculous, if you can believe that; your monsters can regularly get five attacks in a round against an enemy they swarm, I'm not joking. Keep using Arcane Mastery and Violet Solitaires until the DM beats you up. Oh, and you get an extra +4 to damage as well along with an extra attack on a critical hit. Yawn. Follow-Up Blow is the lynchpin of the whole 'I am better than you' thing. Steal Time finally, FINALLY replaces Thunder Cage. It's just flat-out better than everything.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Thu Dec 03, 2009 5:58 am, edited 1 time in total.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

Top

shau
  Knight-Baron
  Posts: 599
  Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

###

- Quote

Post by shau » Fri Dec 04, 2009 4:44 am

A few notes:
I haven't had time to look at everything, but I have no idea what the idea of this build is supposed to be at all. Seriously, give me some clues as to what you want to do in a round.
I don't have anything called wizard's fury. This might be where are I am misunderstanding you. It might be because my character builder is out of date.
The first level of this build is not viable. Seriously, 15 AC and 22 hp? On a melee character? That's just not going to work. You need either a pure healic or maybe a couple paladins willing to devote all their lay on hands to even survive.
That does not seem to get any better later either. The Zulatt brings you up to to 16 AC, so you start tanking like a laser cleric. At level 6 you get to autododge a single shot once an encounter. Seriously, what keeps you from becoming a wet stain on the ground?
Top

Lago PARANOIA
  Invincible Overlord
  Posts: 10555
  Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

###

- Quote

Post by Lago PARANOIA » Fri Dec 04, 2009 12:27 pm

> shau wrote:A few notes:
> I haven't had time to look at everything, but I have no idea what the idea of this build is supposed to be at all. Seriously, give me some clues as to what you want to do in a round.

The goal is to spam as many attacks as possible.

> The first level of this build is not viable. Seriously, 15 AC and 22 hp? On a melee character? That's just not going to work. You need either a pure healic or maybe a couple paladins willing to devote all their lay on hands to even survive.

No, seriously, that's how it works. By level 2, that's rogue defenses and hit points. I don't see what your problem with that is. And if you are sucking then you stand in the back and spam magic missile. You know, like every other wizard does.

> That does not seem to get any better later either. The Zulatt brings you up to to 16 AC, so you start tanking like a laser cleric. At level 6 you get to autododge a single shot once an encounter. Seriously, what keeps you from becoming a wet stain on the ground?

Ask the rogue.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Fri Dec 04, 2009 12:31 pm, edited 1 time in total.

> Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.
> In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.

Top
Post Reply

- Print view

Display:
Sort by:
Direction:

3 posts • Page 1 of 1

Return to “In My Humble Opinion...”

Jump to

- Main
- ↳ About the Gaming Den
- ↳ In My Humble Opinion...
- ↳ I Gave the Mouse a Cookie...
- ↳ In The Trenches
- ↳ It's My Own Invention...
- ↳ MPSIMS