The Gaming Den

A Man In Black wrote: Apparently, this is wrong. PHB3 is going to have the Seeker, the Psion, the Ardent, the Monk, and the Battlemind. The assassin is a Dragon Magazine subscriber exclusive, apparently.

It will also have some divine leader class called the Runepriest (which might as well be called "Another Goddamn Cleric only with out Righteous Brand or Astral Seal so it's Completely Worthless") or something like that.

Apparently WoTC has just completely given up on ever creating a caster based striker that can compete with the Ranger, Duelist Rogue or Barbarian.

How can it be that hard? God damn. Just take the Ranger's powers, reflavor them to be lightning and fire and ice, add feats that are mechanically identical to the ones a Ranger would take and ... ta da!

Fuckin' hell.

NineInchNall wrote:How can it be that hard? God damn. Just take the Ranger's powers, reflavor them to be lightning and fire and ice, add feats that are mechanically identical to the ones a Ranger would take and ... ta da!

Fuckin' hell.

Well see, that would require that people wouldn't automaticly cry that a caster who tosses around two d12's with an at will, hits from 20 yards away, crits on an 18, and gets an extra d8+ of damage on top of all that was the most over powered and broken thing ever.

I mean, there are people playing 4E that think just letting Sorcerers use the crit boosting feature of the Daggermaster paragon path is somehow utterly broken and that a wizard at will that is burst one, enemy-only and has a useful control rider needs to be nerfed simply because it's better than the classes worst at will.

sake wrote:Well see, that would require that people wouldn't automaticly cry that a caster who tosses around two d12's with an at will, hits from 20 yards away, crits on an 18, and gets an extra d8+ of damage on top of all that was the most over powered and broken thing ever.

That's an interesting inversion. Where are all the "real roleplayers" claiming that magic characters should always be strictly better than martial characters for suspension of disbelief purposes?

Archmage wrote:

sake wrote:Well see, that would require that people wouldn't automaticly cry that a caster who tosses around two d12's with an at will, hits from 20 yards away, crits on an 18, and gets an extra d8+ of damage on top of all that was the most over powered and broken thing ever.

That's an interesting inversion. Where are all the "real roleplayers" claiming that magic characters should always be strictly better than martial characters for suspension of disbelief purposes?

It has to do with the compartmentalization of math.
A Martial Attack is "Strength vs. AC, 2[W] + Strength Damage"
A Magic Attack is "Charisma +3 vs. AC, 2d8 + Charisma Damage"

The fact that the weapon inherently brings in a damage boost and to-hit bonus while an implement does not means that every magic attack has to "look" bigger than an equivalent martial attack. You just put them side by side and anything with the "weapon" keyword has a proficiency bonus, a damage boost, and quite often some other stuff like Brutality that the "implement" keyword just doesn't have. And since 4e powers are all about line-item comparisons and very small number shifts, any "implement" power that came with the kind of small numeric bonuses that all "weapon" powers get unstated would on a line-by-line basis look better than anything in the game.

Magic powers can only keep up in 4e land by handing out status effects that make you win. And this is why Wizards own you in the face and Warlocks suck donkey balls.

-Username17

Implement users are also inherently behind because they suffer all the drawbacks of element abuse, while getting few to none of the upsides.

Any ranger can abuse any element feat by simply wielding a bastard sword of the proper element. The hot shit element this week is cold? Frost bastard sword. Radiant? Sun or radiant. Fire? Fiery. Etc., etc. But if you're fighting a cold/radiant/fire elemental, you blow a free action to turn off the element and all you lose is the benefit from a few feats.

On the other hand, if you want to make a cold sorcerer, you take all cold powers, up and down the line, every single thing on your character sheet saying "Freezing" or "Icy" or "Chilling." And if cold gets nerfed, you reroll, and if you're fighting frost elementals, you suck up the resistance or blow resources (feats, paragon paths, special items) to ignore it or just spam Acid Orb and do terrible damage.


More important than this is the fact that warlocks are the only implement strikers from the PHB, and they're conceptually fucked from the start into three or so mutually-exclusive separate builds. So warlocks automatically start with a smaller pool of choices from which to build powerful builds, and any other implement striker is behind by a year. The real way to tell the winner classes from the loser classes is how much material they have to cherrypick from, so old classes and classes which aren't hopelessly gerrymandered into separate power sets are generally best off.

Archmage wrote:

sake wrote:Well see, that would require that people wouldn't automaticly cry that a caster who tosses around two d12's with an at will, hits from 20 yards away, crits on an 18, and gets an extra d8+ of damage on top of all that was the most over powered and broken thing ever.

That's an interesting inversion. Where are all the "real roleplayers" claiming that magic characters should always be strictly better than martial characters for suspension of disbelief purposes?

Are you implying me? If so what exactly are you asking?

sake wrote:Apparently WoTC has just completely given up on ever creating a caster based striker that can compete with the Ranger, Duelist Rogue or Barbarian.

They already have one. It's called the Wizard.

Now while damage-specced wizards aren't as powerful as control-specced wizards they have far and away the best area damage and only modestly less single-target damage than rangers.

A Man In Black wrote:Implement users are also inherently behind because they suffer all the drawbacks of element abuse, while getting few to none of the upsides.

Any ranger can abuse any element feat by simply wielding a bastard sword of the proper element.

What's funny is that custserv can't make up their mind on this one.

ENWorld WotC Customer Service Answers Index wrote:Q: If a power deals a certain type of damage does it have that keyword? For instance if a power deals fire damage does it have the fire keyword?

A: Even though powers that deal a particular type of damage will often have the appropriate keyword to that damage, it doesn't necessarily have to have that keyword.

2nd A: We’ve passed this along to the good folks that make the games and hopefully we’ll see some errata covering this situation soon. Until then, it is up to your Dungeon Master to determine how he/she wants to handle this particular situation in their campaign.

And:

More WotC Custserv wrote:Q: Does attacking (melee or ranged, using an at-will power) with a weapon with the Frost Weapon enchantment constitute "hitting with a power that has the cold keyword" for the purpose of the Wintertouched/Lasting Frost feats? That is, will using an Frost Weapon enchanted sword with its at-will cold power enabled, trigger Wintertouched/Lasting Frost?

A: As PHB page 226 states, using a weapon with a keyword in an attack made with a racial or class power, the power you are using does gain the weapon's keyword. Thus making using attack with a Frost Weapon makes that power be Cold as well as whatever other types of damage it was. If you use the weapon's free action power, all damage will be cold. This will function with both the Winter Touched and Lasting Frost feats.

Oh boy!

Reportedly Mike Mearls said something about how frost weapons etc. don't actually grant keywords to powers, but I don't have a source to link for that one. In any case, the whole affair is kind of hilarious, because nobody seems to agree on how all this crap is supposed to work.

Archmage wrote:
Reportedly Mike Mearls said something about how frost weapons etc. don't actually grant keywords to powers, but I don't have a source to link for that one. In any case, the whole affair is kind of hilarious, because nobody seems to agree on how all this crap is supposed to work.

Mike Mearls is a fucking moron (big surprise) if he actually said this, because pages 55 and 226 directly contradicts him.

55: 'If a power allows you to choose the damage type, the power then has that keyword for feats, resistances, and any other information that applies.'

226: 'When you use a magic item as part of a racial power or a class power, the keywords of the item's power and the other power all apply. For instance, if a paladin uses a flaming sowrd to attack with a power that deals radiant damage, the power deals both fire damage and radiant damage.'

And the FAQ for good measure:

14: When do a Magic Item's keywords apply?

If you use a magic item's power in conjunction with a power granted to you by your race or class, that item's keywords are added to the regular keywords of the power you are using. For example, if you are have a Flaming Weapon, and you use an at-will power to attack an enemy along with the at-will power of the Flaming Weapon, your attack will have the Fire keyword in addition to the normal keywords of your attack. You have to be using the powers of the weapon for those keywords to be added; simply using the magic item does not necessarily mean every keyword attached to a power of that item will be added.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Mike Mearls is a fucking moron (big surprise) if he actually said this

I have to disagree with you, because no matter what he says Mearls is a fucking moron. He joined the D&D as someone who didn't like D&D so he could make it better, and went from mechanics, to story/fluff or whatever and fucked shit up in the first core 4th books, then went back after they were out and everyone noticed how much of a fuck up he was to mechanics.

You don't bring in someone who doesn't like D&D but loves MMOs, in order to spearhead the mechanics of D&D.

Just another reason why Bill Suckadick (or however you spell his name), should have nothing to do with R&D of D&D, because he never knew a thing about it either or who to put into a D&D team.

David Noonan was probably canned because the crappy video podcast DMing job he did, and because he didn't agree with the way his cohort for the podcasts did D&D.

Why sucky behind the camera, he had a good grasp of D&D and would have been far better to lead a D&D team than either Bill Suckadick, or Mike Mearls, for any facet of the game.

When you have the person with the biggest failure of an RPG (Alternity) responsible for D&D, it is no wonder all these other fuckups come in and do their namesake and fuck shit up...Randy Beuhler in regards to DDi initially, GamerZero as community manager/liason and video "journalist" (should be read WotC mouthpiece), Mike Mearls, and to a great extent Scott Rouse for buying his own marketing bullshit he passed off as being good for the brand.

Mearls is part of a long line of fuckups that don't know their asses from a hole in the ground because as you mention, they haven't the balls to stay consistent with any kind of ruling and just change shit for whoever is asking to play kiss-ass rather than make a stable game system that has any chance of working.

So long post short...Mearls is a moron with or without saying what was quoted.

ggroy wrote:

shadzar wrote:You don't bring in someone who doesn't like D&D but loves MMOs, in order to spearhead the mechanics of D&D.

The question is whether choosing somebody else other than Mearls, Heinsoo, etc ... would have actually had made much of a difference.

Were they just simply sycophants to whomever was calling the shots at Hasbro? Did any of them have an absolute veto power in design decisions?

Well, Mearls does not finish projects. Iron Heroes, the Knight class, all the Skill Challenge redos he's done. Everything he has put a pen to has been sent to publish "as is" without double checking the interactions. Iron Heroes has holes in it so large that the only way to move it forward is to toss half the writing. But rather than do any of that work, Mearls chose to publish and walk away.

So regardless of whether MMO-style was mandated from on-high, pulling Mearls in had the predictable effect of leaving you with a bunch of untested subsystems that don't work together. You can say positive and negative things about the skill challenge concept, but it can't be good for Hasbro that the skill challenge execution was so bloody awful. Maybe we were always going to have Tanks, DPS, Healers, and Crowd Control as mandated character "roles" - but with a more disciplined design crew those role titles might have actually meant something.

-Username17

Lago PARANOIA wrote: They already have one. It's called the Wizard.

Now while damage-specced wizards aren't as powerful as control-specced wizards they have far and away the best area damage and only modestly less single-target damage than rangers.

How do you make an uber single target blasting wizard in 4E?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:

Lago PARANOIA wrote: They already have one. It's called the Wizard.

Now while damage-specced wizards aren't as powerful as control-specced wizards they have far and away the best area damage and only modestly less single-target damage than rangers.

How do you make an uber single target blasting wizard in 4E?

Well for starters, every time your opponent doesn't get a turn or doesn't get to attack on their turn, your relative damage to theirs is infinity gajillion to one. Secondly, inflicting one damage on a minion is exactly the same as inflicting one hundred thousand. Th only thing that counts is accuracy.

So if you pull a no-tricks PHB-only Final Destination wizard with Cloud of Daggers and Ray of Frost, you'll be at the same level as the hardest core Striker by the meaningful measures: Damage/Kills per enemy attack.

-Username17

ggroy wrote:

shadzar wrote:You don't bring in someone who doesn't like D&D but loves MMOs, in order to spearhead the mechanics of D&D.

The question is whether choosing somebody else other than Mearls, Heinsoo, etc ... would have actually had made much of a difference.

Were they just simply sycophants to whomever was calling the shots at Hasbro? Did any of them have an absolute veto power in design decisions?

Frank probably said is best as far as Mearls laze faire attitude.

As for the rest, they probably aren't worth a damn either, especially if hasbro was pulling the strings, because they only understand kiddy games and family games, not something that is more constrained to a specific demographic. They only want to go after the biggest bucks in the shortest time.

Now, while I despise Rich Baker for the part he played in Alternity with Bill Suckadick, his books seem to be good in their own, but he seems to be one that fucked stuff up about as bad as Mearls. He knows what he is doing, just isn't doing it right anymore like he did at TSR, which means his is probably just Hasbro bootlicker.

Tweet wasn't worth a fuck for a designers, nor skip williams. Who really IS as WotC now that knows their ass form a hole in the ground about RPGs or D&D would be the real question.

Neinsoo seemed like he was doing good with the minis if he could ever do what all of them lack and find a direction to go with the game, rather than trying to please the masses with something.

They all need to go back and relearn that you can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time...like they are trying to do now and failing majorly at.

RC2 wrote:How do you make an uber single target blasting wizard in 4E?

Because wizards get off-action attacks; specifically, their dailies that let them sustain powers as a minor action.

So even if all they did was spam Scorching Burst + Flaming Sphere and stack on as many damage-boosting expansion options as possible (and wizards get the lion's share, such as Dual Implement Spellcaster and Elemental Empowerment) their single-target damage would still be large enough to cause anyone but rangers and unerrata'd Tempest Fighters to weep with envy.

The fact that a lot of sustain minor damaging spells also have killer rider effects (such as Stinking Cloud, Evard's Dreadful Mist, and Evard's Black Tentacles) is just icing on the ass-shaped cake.

ggroy wrote:

shadzar wrote:They all need to go back and relearn that you can please all of the people some of the time, some of the people all of the time, but you cannot please all of the people all of the time...like they are trying to do now and failing majorly at.

What would be amusing is if they end up firing everyone in the D&D game development group at the 2010 xmas layoffs (or earlier). What's left will be the D&D novel publishing business, and a skeleton crew which handles freelancers that write articles for the DDI online service.

Then 4th edition might get some fluff beyond the upcoming MM?

I think your previous statement will be precisely what Mearls invisions for 5E.

To prevent confusion all classes will be identical, so that only one set of rules need to be made. Also all monsters will be identical so to will be all functions.

5E will have 300 pages per book detailing ways to flip a coin to arrived at the outcome for situation. No more need for dice because they add too much confusion with there 4 or more possible outcomes.

You will try to do something and flip a coin and either pass or fail with no modifiers to the flip.

This will mean there is no chance for a DM to in any way fudge or change the outcome against the players

RandomCasualty2 wrote:How do you make an uber single target blasting wizard in 4E?

Apparently AOEs + extra damage as a minor action is one of the defining characteristics of a controller in 4e; invokers also get it with minor-action conjurations, summons, and zones, and druids get it with instinctive-action summons.

Invokers suck for AoE damage, though, because they have the fewest of sustain-minor powers and the fewest summons. Seriously, Divine Power gave the Invokers no new summons.

Druid damage spam is fairly good at higher level levels, but the problem with it is that if their summon goes down--which is a fair bet at low levels--they suffer a huge drop in DPS. Summons are actually not a very good way to do damage spam over a workday that lasts for more than two encounters, because the combination of burning healing surges for your summons plus burning them for Salves of Power will drain you dry, fast. My Wizard Super-Blaster build is more of a theoretical build pre-epic than a usable one if you don't constantly rest between encounters, because you will sap your resources quickly.

Wizards have off-action attacks with conjurations, which can't be attacked and don't burn healing surges. They also get Enlarge Spell. Their sustain-minor powers are the best, often packing on effects aside from damage. Seriously, Stinking Cloud rocks your ass so hard that people agonized between choosing that and Grasp of the Grave and Visions of Avarice at the peak of their powers. The Wizard's only weakness is that their encounter attack powers are mediocre pre-epic (though they have a couple of nice ones), which is why the invoker actually isn't completely worthless. At level 17, they're pretty much at the top of their game. Or at least, they would be if they weren't about to enter Epic...

In short, if you want ranged AoE damage, grab a wizard. If you want ranged single-target damage and your DM banned rangers, grab a wizard. If you want ranged AoE status effects, grab a wizard.

Lago PARANOIA wrote:Invokers suck for AoE damage, though, because they have the fewest of sustain-minor powers and the fewest summons. Seriously, Divine Power gave the Invokers no new summons.

Suck compared to wizards, or suck period? One of the best damage strategies (single-target or otherwise) is given to all controllers, so they all start to make the strikers who don't get multiple attack rolls per turn feel small in the pants.