The Gaming Den

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

K wrote: But that's just a setting problem, and it can be fixed by positing a certain culture (the Wish Economy) or just taking things to their logical conclusion (planar travellers = Sigil).

well I have a problem when the rules create "setting problems", because that basically means that I can't tell the stories I want to tell without doing weird shit. Having god wizards that rule over everything is fine if I'm running Dark Sun, but maybe I'd like fighters to have more of a real role in power? In 3.5 that's pretty much impossible, because the rules effectively dictate that high level spellcasters control everything.

I never really saw spellcasters as controlling everything. They did get all the interesting non-combat stuff, but I always assumed that if Conan can be followed around by a wizard, then the 3e Fighter can take Leadership and do the same.

I mean, even taking Leadership means that you don't have to buy weapons with max bonuses because of greater magic weapon, so it just boosts your non-combat magic items and thus your non-combat ability.

OK, reading through the 4e MM right now has me concerned.
Once again, as expected really, monster power design was by fiat with flavor (and purpose) pulled straight from 3.x. And that's fine, but....

It makes designing new monsters more difficult for both other WOTC designers and fans.
The powers are specifically tailored to each and every individual beast, demon, and giant, and no other.

What should have been done:
As mentioned in an older thread, all powers come from a huge shared list with much crossover.
These powers can be categorized by "brute" or "caster" or whatever, but the purpose of this is to have direct comparison between what monsters can do at each level.
The monsters themselves then have their 'classes' which define how many and how often the powers can be used.

What a disappointment.
They did it for the PC classes. Sorta. Mostly with Paragon path slots, but still.
Just one more step further into the monster design and they could have nailed it.

has a date for the secondary PHBs that have the bard/druid/monk/sorcerer/psion/barbarian in them been set yet?

I'm rather curious to see how they're going to do the other controller types, since the wizard seemed to have gotten stuck inbetween being a blaster for legacy reasons and a controller for group dynamic reasons and ended up sucking at both for it.

Also it seems that Laser Clerics(tm) can actually serve as good as a blaster as a wizard, and with intimidate could also serve as a controller for the most part since the skill is pretty broken. That makes me sad in my soul... although Laser Cleric(tm) is just really fun to say for some reason.

Oh godammit now my mind is automaticly taking old jokes about facemelting WoW Shadow Priests and reworking them for Laser Clerics(tm)

So, certain builds of Clerics win the game again? Wow, some things never change.

Laser Cleric (tm) does sound pretty cool. I want to make one for 3.5

Pretty much. Basically just take Wisdom as your highest stat and Charisma as your next highest. Then go through the list and take every power with the Radiant key word. At 11th level, pick up the Radiant Servant package and all your attacks do max+ damage on a 19-20, which counts as a good ability in this game.

You end up doing very comparable amounts of damage to a Fighter, and your lasers go farther and have cooler special effects (like giving out temporary hit points or attack bonuses). Unfortunately, your to-hit blows, because you're basically just like any other character except that you don't get a proficiency bonus on attack rolls. But that doesn't even matter because you are targeting Reflex instead of AC, which makes the target 1-4 points easier to-hit pretty much across the board.

---

In other news, mixing ranged parties and close combat parties is bordering on the retarded. Melee characters become more vulnerable the less characters are on the front line, and their pushing and shifting powers don't really mean dick if there aren't other people on the front line. So really you have two parties:

Rogue, Fighter, Paladin, Warlord

and

Cleric, Ranger, Warlock, Wizard

But if you wanted to replace a Wizard with a second Cleric or something, I would totally understand. There really aren't 4 different roles, only 2. There's melee and ranged, and pretty much everyone hands out debilitating conditions, weird bonuses, or bonus hit points from time to time at unpredictable intervals. Mixing Melee and Ranged characters makes both groups less effective.

A Fighter gets way better by handing the Mark back and forth when he starts taking real damage than he does by having a Ranger in the back row do marginally more damage. A Ranger gets way better by having another Ranger pegging away at the same target than he does by having a Paladin off marking enemies so that they suffer a virtually inconsequential -2 to hit the Ranger.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Pretty much. Basically just take Wisdom as your highest stat and Charisma as your next highest. Then go through the list and take every power with the Radiant key word. At 11th level, pick up the Radiant Servant package and all your attacks do max+ damage on a 19-20, which counts as a good ability in this game.

Actually, you can ditch charisma and throw your remaining stat points into dex and con. There are a couple secondary effects for charisma, but you can either avoid them, or they're so trivial they don't even matter. You're better off just bumping your other defenses and your init and hit points.

You end up doing very comparable amounts of damage to a Fighter, and your lasers go farther and have cooler special effects (like giving out temporary hit points or attack bonuses). Unfortunately, your to-hit blows, because you're basically just like any other character except that you don't get a proficiency bonus on attack rolls. But that doesn't even matter because you are targeting Reflex instead of AC, which makes the target 1-4 points easier to-hit pretty much across the board.

This works out more or less the same. the 1-4 points easier to hit overlaps with the +2 or +3 a weapons guy is getting from the proficiency bonus. Its more stuff thats exactly the same, no matter what faux 'choice' you make.


Interesting comment on the parties, frank. The cleric is something of a problem in the ranged party because many of his attacks are absurdly short ranged... same with the warlock. Since people can move and then charge to move and attack, Range 10 or less means you're in melee unless you drop the enemy... which you pretty much explicitly can't.
You must stun/daze/blind/immobilize every time (and every creature), or your utterly fvcked.

A strength cleric can also play in the melee party. Probably more effectively than the warlord, since he can hand out +5 to attack every time he hits with his Righteous Brand at will. (+5 because there is no reason not to max out your attack stat).

sigma999 wrote:Class templates? Interesting. Must have missed that.
Can a player use an "elite" with a template for more HP, or is that outright Not Allowed?

Nope. templates are monster only things. The game is pretty clearly split into 'these are my toys' and 'those are your toys'.

K wrote:
I never really saw spellcasters as controlling everything. They did get all the interesting non-combat stuff, but I always assumed that if Conan can be followed around by a wizard, then the 3e Fighter can take Leadership and do the same.

I mean, even taking Leadership means that you don't have to buy weapons with max bonuses because of greater magic weapon, so it just boosts your non-combat magic items and thus your non-combat ability.

Just the straight up versatility of casters pretty much means they control everything. They've got charm, dominate, wall of stone, fabricate, divinations and the ability to get effectively infinite wishes. That means if you want to build big castles, rule cities, or do anything that isn't just about hacking something with a sword, the fighter types are at a huge disadvantage.

And as far as leadership, personally I think that's a bullshit feat. It's basically just saying, "I suck, but I'll get an NPC following me around that doesn't."

And just reinforces the stereotype that fighters can't even wipe their own asses without a spellcaster to help them do it. That's the one thing I really hated about 3rd edition. Fighters needed wizards and clerics for buffs and healing and all that crap, but the wizard or cleric couldn't give two shits if the fighter was around or not.

Voss wrote: The game is pretty clearly split into 'these are my toys' and 'those are your toys'.

This is one aspect that I actually like about 4E as far as game deisgn principles go. I've long felt it was stupid that NPCs (casters especially) were built on the same rules as PCs. PCs do different things. They're expected to go multiple fights in a day and generally have more staying power.

NPCs on the other hand are generally there just to blow their entire wad in one fight. Really, the two should have abilities from different pools, since a monster pretty much needs to be weaker than a PC, because the monster can afford to fire off its strongest abilities, the PC can't always do that.

In a game about resource depletion, having NPCs with the exact same amount of daily abilities as PCs is just bad game design.

PCs aren't monsters and monsters aren't PCs. They really shouldn't use the same rules, because they fulfill different roles in the game.

Frank wrote: In other news, mixing ranged parties and close combat parties is bordering on the retarded. Melee characters become more vulnerable the less characters are on the front line, and their pushing and shifting powers don't really mean dick if there aren't other people on the front line.

That's a good point now that I think of it. Yeah, it would pretty much suck being the only fighter in a ranger, warlock, wizard party. I do think that a balanced group of meleers and ranged could work. Like Fighter/paladin and cleric/wizard or something like that. Mostly just because the fighter and paladin can trade off marks with each other. The cleric heals and the wizard immobilizes and blasts. I figure that'd work okay.

What I don't think you can do though is have only a single melee and a bunch of ranged. 3 melee and one ranged could work I suppose. Though the definite advantage of a ranged party is that you can pick up kiting potential. Not sure how good that will be in a dungeon though.

PCs aren't monsters and monsters aren't PCs. They really shouldn't use the same rules, because they fulfill different roles in the game.

Hmm. This, for me, is like your problem with spellcasters ruling everything in 3e. If someone is a wizard, that means he should do x, y and z (whatever those are), in whatever fashion that wizards do things. I really don't like the idea that your wizard does things *this* way, and has *these* abilities, while every other wizard in the world does something else. Simple logic says to me that you are not a wizard. You're a weird, one-off mutant. Except possibly there's maybe 5 of you that that have happened to band together. But every other wizard... yeah. It just seems wrong.

Voss wrote: Hmm. This, for me, is like your problem with spellcasters ruling everything in 3e. If someone is a wizard, that means he should do x, y and z (whatever those are), in whatever fashion that wizards do things. I really don't like the idea that your wizard does things *this* way, and has *these* abilities, while every other wizard in the world does something else. Simple logic says to me that you are not a wizard. You're a weird, one-off mutant. Except possibly there's maybe 5 of you that that have happened to band together. But every other wizard... yeah. It just seems wrong.

Well, the thing is that if NPCs do stuff the PC way, then they've got access to all their dailies to blow in each battle, and there's really no reason they wouldn't want to do that.

Now if you run everything with at will and encounter abilities, you can very easily make PCs and NPCs alike. But once daily factors into it, it really becomes impossible, because now you either balance it such that NPCs aren't overwhelming (and thus PCs suck) or PCs are at full power (and NPCs are made of awesome).

The fundamental problem is this:
for PCs: daily ability > encounter ability
for NPCs: daily ability = encounter ability.

I just don't see any way of making both of those true and yet having NPC and PC be the same.

Also, as far as movie tropes and stuff go, PC and NPC wizards don't really feel alike. In Lodoss war, the good wizard and the bad wizard didn't really use any of the same spells. Saruman and Gandalf both had telekinesis, but that was about it. Voldemort uses different spells from Harry Potter.

I guess it just doesn't bother me much that they're different. It can easily just be explained away in terms of wizard specialties: maybe the hobgoblin warcaster's magic really is different from a human wizard's magic.

Also the whole problem with making them equal is that you've got to use PC ability charts and bullshit when making NPCs and monsters. Honestly, no. It's just not worth the extra prep time for the slight amount of added "realism" that you happen to get from it. It adds roughly 10 minute to a half hour of added time to build NPCs of mid to high level when you have to make them as though they were PCs. For something that's going to last a single combat, it's just not worth the effort.

If it's a BBEG, then fine, it's cool to make him interesting if you plan on having him be a recurring villain. But for just some random mooks or castle guards, I just want to get some numbers down on paper and start rolling. I really do just want to do the 4E approach and not look at the guard as a character, but more as a speedbump for the PCs to go over. Give him appropriate numbers to his level, throw in a few interesting abilities to add color and go. I don't care if he trained at fighter school or warlord school.

One thing I like about 4E is that you could make a monster on the fly rather easily and they gave you end result guidelines, as opposed to the 3.5 rules that make you feel like an overworked bureaucrat everytime you wanted to create a monster. And after you were done, you ended up wtih a monster that wasn't guaranteed to be balanced, it was just rules consistent with PCs.

Now, I don't know if the 4E monster guidelines actually work well, but I definitely like the concept. "Set AC to level + X" is a very good concept for helping to balance encounters.

I really love the idea of on the fly DMing because as a DM it allows me to give my PCs way more freedom. 3.5 almost forced me to put my PCs on rails because I just could not adapt fast enough when they did something unexpected and I just didn't have time to stat everything. Even something like making a random encounter was difficult in 3.5 if you ran an NPC centric campaign.

In 4E, the DM has much more freedom to wing it.

Probably true. I just don't like that the concepts can't be reconciled... that you can't be a npc quickly, which works the same way a pc does.

Voss wrote:Probably true. I just don't like that the concepts can't be reconciled... that you can't be a npc quickly, which works the same way a pc does.

Well they can. It's basically called 2nd edition AD&D. It was so easy to create a fighter there, because they had no interesting abilities and it was just Thaco = 21-level and hit dice = 1d10 per level. You then gave him some strength and dex for determining his bonuses and decided if the plus on his weapon. Then give him weapon spec and you were pretty much done. It was something that was easy to do.

It wasn't a particularly interesting encounter, but it was doable.

But when 3E came along, it was discovered that players like to have more depth and options than just taking an attack action each round. And really, I think that added fun factor is more important than trying to make the two work consistently. Because PCs really can afford to play a game where they've got a lot of options, and that's good because they control only one character and can keep track of all those abilities. DMs can't though, so NPCs pretty much need to be simplified.

The main design innovation that came out of 3E was handing out a bunch of interesting character building options to players. The problem is that that system really can't work for NPCs. 4E at least seems to realize that.

For NPCs to be simple to create, you have to take away choices. A somewhat easy NPC caster to make is a beguiler, because he doesn't have to choose anything. He simply has one list and he picks off of it whenever. It's not particularly balanced, since you run into the daily versus encounter thing again, but it's pretty quick. Well, until you start factoring in the magic items, then things get complex again. The christmas tree approach is pretty much entirely unworkable when it comes to NPCs, because it takes too much time. First you've got to go shopping for them, and then you have to apply all those bonuses. You just can't do that on the fly at all. So pretty much magic items (beyond maybe one or two) for NPCs are out.

But really, if Frank's math about 4E high levels meaning increased combat length is correct, that's going to screw the game over. Though it could also just be that they've instituted some system of planned power creep, where new power creeped abilities in splatbooks will put characters back on track damage wise.

But that's probably giving the designers too much credit, more than likely, their math was simply off. Because as we know, they really can't do math. The 4E math is better than the 3E math slightly, but that's only because Monte Cook is no longer working for WotC. So the overall average math level of the design team rose to elementary school level instead of counting things with blocks, which is Monte's preferred method.

The Laser Paladin looks like it might be superior to the Laser Cleric. Intimidate as a class skill, better HP, better armor, less MAD..

[Edit] Well, not less MAD [/Edit]

I'm not sure f I agree with Frank about the two party system.

I think that it's quite easy to do a Final Fantasy party where the meleer is handed all the magic equipment so he has totally awesome defenses and the cleric drops healing on him while other people toss ranged attacks. Since AoOs are limited to one per guy but unlimited per round, it seems WotC really wants tanks in the game.

Since few monsters have attacks with range greater than 5, then you really can just sit at the edge of that range and push monsters back for more AoOs or immobilize them so that their only viable attack is against the fighter(whose defenses reduce those attacks to near inviability).

K wrote:I'm not sure f I agree with Frank about the two party system.

I think that it's quite easy to do a Final Fantasy party where the meleer is handed all the magic equipment so he has totally awesome defenses and the cleric drops healing on him while other people toss ranged attacks. Since AoOs are limited to one per guy but unlimited per round, it seems WotC really wants tanks in the game.

Since few monsters have attacks with range greater than 5, then you really can just sit at the edge of that range and push monsters back for more AoOs or immobilize them so that their only viable attack is against the fighter(whose defenses reduce those attacks to near inviability).

How would you manage that? A Fighter can use a Heavy Shield and can wear Heavy Armor. He can spend a feat to wear Plate! Let's fast forward it to 10th level so you have something to work with. He has 69 + Con Mods Hit Points, and a base AC of 25 + Magic Bonuses. You can wear Dwarven Plate +3 (and you will, because it's crazy better than the other armor that costs more), it's one of the biggest and most expensive items in the party. You can and will get a +3 Guardian's Cape. You can wear a +2 Belt of Vigor and...what? You can't get enhancement bonuses on your shield. Basically nothing stacks. You've just super maxed your 10th level defenses and your AC is 28.

But is it enough? Looking at a random Level 10 Encounter, you're looking at a Bog Hag (Hits you on a 13+), a Venom-Eye Basilisk (Bite hits on a 13+, Poison Gaze hits probably on an 8+), 2 Shambling Mounds (with 2 attacks each that land on a 16+), and 2 Trolls (who hit for big damage on a 15+).

I'll grant that you can win a fight doing that, maybe, but you're going to be burning through an awful lot of healing surges doing it. Remember what a slow grind it is to get rid of even a single Troll with its 100 hit points that heals 10 points every round. And these monsters have weird ways that time and again trigger bonus attacks. I just don't see you getting through a lot of encounters this way without getting the Fighter killed repeatedly. Defensive equipment just isn't good enough to make standing and fighting a viable proposition unless you are passing hate back and forth.

-Username17

RandomCasualty2 wrote:One thing I like about 4E is that you could make a monster on the fly rather easily and they gave you end result guidelines, as opposed to the 3.5 rules that make you feel like an overworked bureaucrat everytime you wanted to create a monster. And after you were done, you ended up wtih a monster that wasn't guaranteed to be balanced, it was just rules consistent with PCs.

Now, I don't know if the 4E monster guidelines actually work well, but I definitely like the concept. "Set AC to level + X" is a very good concept for helping to balance encounters.

I really love the idea of on the fly DMing because as a DM it allows me to give my PCs way more freedom. 3.5 almost forced me to put my PCs on rails because I just could not adapt fast enough when they did something unexpected and I just didn't have time to stat everything. Even something like making a random encounter was difficult in 3.5 if you ran an NPC centric campaign.

In 4E, the DM has much more freedom to wing it.

This is true.

I've played with Dm's in the past that constructed their monsters like they were Min/Maxing players. In other words, they built monsters with the same effort and attention to detail that a player would. All of this work was built toward the endpoint of creating a monster that was a challenge which the Dm wanted for his players.

That is all wrong. A Dm shouldn't have to jump through hoops just to create a creature of monster type X, with Y abilities, with a CR of Z.

I just recall what CR is supposed to do. It is supposed to be a guideline for finding appropriate challenges for Pc's. For competent Dm's it is easier to just write appropriate numbers for your Npc's in 3.x. Then the only challenging part is keeping the party on the same RNG with respect to each other.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that one of the primary benefits of 4e, easy monster generation, is easily accomplished in 3.x with houserules and an experienced Dm. Note that I acknowledge it is still a fault in the game. However, I think it would be significantly more difficult for a Dm to inject fun abilities into 4e.

FrankTrollman wrote:

K wrote:I'm not sure f I agree with Frank about the two party system.

I think that it's quite easy to do a Final Fantasy party where the meleer is handed all the magic equipment so he has totally awesome defenses and the cleric drops healing on him while other people toss ranged attacks. Since AoOs are limited to one per guy but unlimited per round, it seems WotC really wants tanks in the game.

Since few monsters have attacks with range greater than 5, then you really can just sit at the edge of that range and push monsters back for more AoOs or immobilize them so that their only viable attack is against the fighter(whose defenses reduce those attacks to near inviability).

How would you manage that? A Fighter can use a Heavy Shield and can wear Heavy Armor. He can spend a feat to wear Plate! Let's fast forward it to 10th level so you have something to work with. He has 69 + Con Mods Hit Points, and a base AC of 25 + Magic Bonuses. You can wear Dwarven Plate +3 (and you will, because it's crazy better than the other armor that costs more), it's one of the biggest and most expensive items in the party. You can and will get a +3 Guardian's Cape. You can wear a +2 Belt of Vigor and...what? You can't get enhancement bonuses on your shield. Basically nothing stacks. You've just super maxed your 10th level defenses and your AC is 28.

But is it enough? Looking at a random Level 10 Encounter, you're looking at a Bog Hag (Hits you on a 13+), a Venom-Eye Basilisk (Bite hits on a 13+, Poison Gaze hits probably on an 8+), 2 Shambling Mounds (with 2 attacks each that land on a 16+), and 2 Trolls (who hit for big damage on a 15+).

Against the vs. AC attackers, he is a product of other character's abilities plus his own. Other characters like Wizards are knocking guys prone(-2), blinding(-5), or dazing(-2) them (they stack), Ranger's might use Disrupting Strike(-3 and Wis mod)), Cleric's toss down Sanctuary so that on the monster's turn the Fighter gets +5 to Defenses for a turn, or any number of per encounter stuff happens like things being slid out of range. The Fighter is using Distracting Shield (-2 to hit for marked monsters you did AoOs to) and since he's not an idiot he's a Dwarf and against the the Large monsters he has +1 AC for Dodge Giants (and he's got a +5 vs the Basilisk's poison attack). He's also tossing in Total Defense for a +2 AC because he's doing his damage from AoOs(spiked chain) and playing tank.

And that's his AC before people start popping off daily powers or he gets cover or concealment bonuses. Figure in that the cleric is casting Sacred Flame every turn for a new crop of temp HPs for the Fighter while doing damage to a beasty, and this really is FFXI all over.

SphereOfFeetMan wrote:
I guess what I'm trying to say is that one of the primary benefits of 4e, easy monster generation, is easily accomplished in 3.x with houserules and an experienced Dm. Note that I acknowledge it is still a fault in the game. However, I think it would be significantly more difficult for a Dm to inject fun abilities into 4e.

Well not exactly, because the math isn't exactly arranged as simple as 4E. With 4E, they at least tried to have a mathematical system that worked. It actually doesn't seem to be too bad for attack bonuses and stuff. It's only the damage system where it implodes. But lets face it doing damage is hard anyway, there are many more factors to worry about.

It's not just going to be some formula like X+CR to determine a monsters attack modifiers, because the 3.5 power curve goes up faster. Honestly i"m not even sure what formula you'd use for 3.5 and I've been playing it since 3.0 came out. The system ends up being so divergent at high levels that trying to determine a table of numbers is almost impossible. About the only way you can do it is look at your PCs bonuses and tailor from there.

CatharzGodfoot wrote:The Laser Paladin looks like it might be superior to the Laser Cleric. Intimidate as a class skill, better HP, better armor, less MAD..

[Edit] Well, not less MAD [/Edit]

The trick to dealing with the cleric and paladin MAD issue is that you just dump a stat. You either take wis and reject anything that relies on charisma or you take chr and dump wis. It hurts a couple class features, here and there, but you really can't afford to do both. You can try it, but you pretty much have to dump your reflex down the tubes.

The advantage is, the way the classes are built you're either following primary stat A or primary stat B, and each level roughly has two powers for each camp. Since you top out at 3 encounter and 3 daily powers, its absurdly easy to stick to your chosen stat. You just have to deal with the fact that some builds get absolutely screwed by the paragon paths, like the star warlock or the beatstick cleric (somehow with 4 paragon paths to choose from, they put in 3 laser cleric paths and a half-and-half path). Fucking stupid. At that point you have to take the first multiclass feat for fighter or warlord and steal one of their paths.

The Laser Cleric actually has an advantage here and he can also dump strength and go directly for Con for the handful of extra hit points and the extra healing surges.

Meanwhile the ranger, warlord, rogue and warlock point and you and laugh, because the only stats they have to care about raise all their defenses.

The thing that truly struck me as sad? You literally have ~20% of your total power ever at first level. You're up to about 70% at 7th, with 3 encounter and 3 daily powers. You'll pick up a few utilities at later levels, and the paragon path fills in the rest. Everything else is just increasing numbers... which matches the increasing numbers of monster defenses, skill DCs and every thing else. The only thing that doesn't match up is your damage capability to the monster hit points. You actually fall behind, sadly.

I just found this while paging through Equipment. Dimensional Shackles, a 17th level item. Long and short of it: Str OR Dex vs. Reflex, but requires combat advantage. On a hit, they are Restrained (which means they can't move from the square they're in), and they also can't teleport or anything else out. The only way out is for someone to let them out, or a DC 35 Acrobatics (WTF?) check.

Now, obviously this was intended to be used for plot-restraints that wizards and shit can't just teleport out of. Obviously nobody looked it over, either, because this completely ends solo encounters at around the level you acquire it. It does take a bit of work to set up (due to requiring combat advantage), but it really isn't that hard. And once you get them on, pretty much every remotely level-appropriate Solo is fucked. The Level 18 Mordant Hydra? Needs a 20 to get out, and has max range 10. Walk out to 11, laserbeam it to death. Whee. The level 25 hydra needs a 17 to escape, and again, max range 10. The level 22 red dragon needs an 18, although it has a fireball that hits a single target every 2d6 rounds. It's still pretty boned.

Edit: It also explicitly says it conforms to any size or body type. So yeah, you can hogtie a purple worm this way. They are also horribly hosed by this technique. Even the level 24 one needs a 19 to get loose, and it has nothing with range above 4.

Good find UmaroVI The problem seems to be hitting initially with the bracers. Level 24s seem to be vulnerable, but by level 29, the monsters have a good chance of breaking free. Still this seems more reliable than hoping a saving throw will fail.

Especially against solos, who have a fucking +5 to saves, and thus take a round of effect, then have a 80% chance of the effect ending.

And several classes have the ability to actually hand out combat advantage, so that isn't even that much of a problem.

They really didn't put much thought into the 'secondary' items. It makes me sad, since I was fucking arguing with Mikey about it 6 months ago on ENworld. Admittedly, 75% suck ass (shield of bashing? Do you really want to shell out shitloads of gold to push someone 3d4 squares? Really?), but some of the constant ones are no brainers... even the heroic tier versions which cost essentially nothing later on.

RandomCasualty2 wrote:The system ends up being so divergent at high levels that trying to determine a table of numbers is almost impossible. About the only way you can do it is look at your PCs bonuses and tailor from there.

Yes, that is what I meant.

I just love how Pelor will reject Lawful Good clerics, but Unaligned ones are fine by him. Especially the way it's not just a side effect of the new alignment system, but an actual example they give.

UmaroVI wrote:I just love how Pelor will reject Lawful Good clerics, but Unaligned ones are fine by him. Especially the way it's not just a side effect of the new alignment system, but an actual example they give.

Yet another example of The Burning Hate.