The Gaming Den

Roy wrote:50 * 50 feet isn't big, especially when discussing dragons who likely have wingspans close to that distance.

As I said before, you just avoid the closet trolls. Done.

Also, everyone can get flight. Most can get ranged attacks and/or teleport. Done.

Roy wrote:The horse archer requires enemies to be as fast or faster, and have the same or better range...

MartinHarper wrote:

Roy wrote:The horse archer requires enemies to be as fast or faster, and have the same or better range...

The monster just needs to have (move speed + shoot range) > (mongol shoot range), or move speed > mongol move speed. Sadly, many 4e monsters have neither.

MartinHarper wrote:Horses are large, so it's going to be harder to move them through forests while avoiding trees and difficult terrain. Also, trees can block line of sight or provide superior cover, and they provide opportunities for stealth. I think mongols are still going to be most effective on the plains.

Roy wrote:Ok, let's say you have a move speed of 7, which some PCs on foot do. This means, a 75 * 75 room might as well be a closet, as they can go from the middle to any other place as a single move action. Therefore, that moving bit? Just a formality, as it doesn't impede Action Economy at all.

Now, what are some monster move speeds?

FrankTrollman wrote:

Roy wrote:Ok, let's say you have a move speed of 7, which some PCs on foot do. This means, a 75 * 75 room might as well be a closet, as they can go from the middle to any other place as a single move action. Therefore, that moving bit? Just a formality, as it doesn't impede Action Economy at all.

Now, what are some monster move speeds?

No.

A 75 foot across room is not a fucking closet. The fact that movement is so ridiculous in 4e that people can teleport across frankly huge expanses is a separate problem that the rules have. Don't play shell games and claim that rooms larger than my entire building are closets, it makes you look like a moron.

The fact is that in moving 25 feet across a room, I have access to 51 different paths that cost me absolutely nothing to utilize. And this essentially invalidates positioning and makes all terrain that isn't a wall meaningless. But it doesn't mean that if you have a room that's 75 feet across you have found a closet.

It means that melee superiority is essentially unbeatable in anything even remotely recognizable as an indoor encounter, and that ranged superiority is essentially unbeatable in anything remotely recognizable as an outdoor encounter. It makes the "striker" role even more meaningless than it already was because you can't stop people from attacking the enemies they want to attack regardless of whether they are nominally strikers or skirmishers or not. But it doesn't make large rooms into closets.

-Username17

FrankTrollman wrote:Squares should not happen if you intend your game to be extensible. People of even superheroic tier shouldn't give a fuck about 5' more or less either, because they should be teleporting and leaping hundreds of feet in the blink of an eye.

The areas that people interact with should rise smoothly as they grow in power. A 14th level character shouldn't have a threatened area of "2 squares" or even "10 feet" - he should be threatening an area of "30 meters." Maybe more.

-Username17

I'm afraid I have to disagree with your analysis.

Defender and Leader aren't nearly the same thing. You can sum them up with the same one line description that you used... and in fact you can sum up all the characters with "does damage to kill monsters before they kill you"... but by the same logic a Cleric is a Fighter, and they're both Rogues and Wizards, too. That clearly isn't true.

Strikers don't just do damage, they do more damage faster. The three Player's Handbook strikers each have a special ability that lets them add damage dice to their attacks. The Barbarian has an At Will power that does 1W + Strength mod + 1d8* (edit, that's what I get for trying to remember game mechanics first thing in the morning when I'm on sleep meds) damage. Since the standard "Big Ass Barbarian" does 1d12 damage (and most two handed weapons do in that neighborhood... 1d10, 1d12, 2d6), that's effectively double damage. For an At Will attack. Their At Wills with debilitating side effects do full damage with Str mod, where most classes have At Wills that either do full damage plus modifier, or less damage and an effect.

Simply put, the Strikers do a shitload of damage. As you've pinpointed that the ultimate way of disrupting an enemy's ability to do damage, I don't see how you can deny that this is an important distinction between them and the other classes.

So why doesn't everybody do a Striker? The goal is still to get the bad guys on the ground faster than they can kill you, so why not pick the mega damage classes for the whole party?

Because 4E combat is not Party Vs. Monster, it's Party Vs. Monsters, and even the highly fragile minions can inflict serious damage if left unchecked. This is where Controllers and Defenders come in. Defenders "interrupt the enemies' ability to do damage" by engaging with them directly in combat. Controllers throw out area effects, they have "crowd control" powers, they manage the battlefield. Between them they can 1) kill minions quickly to blunt the monsters' initial advantage, 2) keep the monsters from overwhelming the squishy party members, and 3) get monsters in position for overwhelming attacks.

And then Leaders... Leaders have varying ability to interrupt the enemy, but their real strength is in what they do for their own party. At Wills that do a little damage plus give the Striker a hit bonus or the Defender extra HP (or give those to whoever needs them), every turn. Encounter and Daily powers that let them shift the entire party into position or concentrate fire on a single enemy.

Played properly (with varying enemies to match the varying roles, it makes combat into a strategic experience with many and varied roleplaying hooks compared to the standard "roll, hit, roll damage. Roll, miss. Roll hit, roll damage." since individual monsters are more distinctive and distinct things are actually happening each and every turn. Having minions in a fight is a great way of pumping up the menace without making the fight unwinnable, and it simulates the "reality" of heroic fantasy a lot better (where you can charge across a battlefield, downing the minor orcs with every slash).

It never ceases to amaze me how many people who are probably perfectly good DMs outside of combat think that running combat means you're playing a war game against the players instead of roleplaying the monsters with attention to their motivations, their knowledge (as opposed to your knowledge of game mechanics), drama, and the other stuff that always goes into DMing.

I mean, if the first time the players met the Sekritly Evil Grand Vizier, he announced, "Well, I know you're the heroes and I've arranged to meet you in this room which negates your divine and arcane abilities, and you don't have your weapons. Now you're dead.", everybody would agree that is a shitastically shitacular piece of shitty DMing.

But the same people who would agree that's shitty DMing feel free to reduce combat down to barest game statistics, then play it out... well, like I said, like it's a war game of them (the person) vs. the players. They rely on their knowledge of game statistics and mechanics and claim anybody who doesn't is "going easy"... gah. That's missing the point by a wide margin. In the games I've played and the games I've DMed, combat has always been challenging, winnable, and fun for everyone (with the exception of the half-session we spent before we figured out what we were doing).

I find it funny that some of the 4E bashers are laying the lack of balance at the feet of Gary Gygax... it's true, and it has a lot to do with D&D's war game roots where an army consisted of units that weren't meant to be balanced against each other... but their complaints reflect the fact that they're still viewing D&D combat the way he did, as a war game with each player controlling a single unit, instead of as a "simulation" of heroic fantasy.

The existence of roles and the implicit preference for having all bases covered in a party is supposed to give DMs a way to build encounters where the average party will have something for everyone to do, something to be useful. A DM who's going "LOL U LOSERS HAVE A PALLY INSTEAD OF A 2ND LEADER AND I CAN IGNORE YOUR DIVINE CHALLENGE AND WALK RIGHT PAST U TO KILL THE WIZARD RIGHT AND THEN CONCENTRATE ALL MY ATTACKS ON THE ROGUE AND THERE'S NOTHING U CAN DO ABOUT IT." isn't evidence of a broken system, it's evidence of a broken DM.

The DM should be thinking about what the Divine Challenge is, how the monster responds to being called out like that... and above all, he or she should be thinking about the narrative of the game, which the roles bring to combat. DMs aren't meant to ignore things like Divine Challenges routinely.

AC? Damage Per Round? Mummy Lords don't know shit about those things. They just know a hated servant of the vile gods of light just got up in their face and laid a challenge on them. It takes a terrible DM to ignore something like that.

I'm not saying DMs need to make the monsters line up in neat rows in the most convenient order for the players to mow them down, but if the DM doesn't realize that the roles are cues for them as well, if the DM persists in playing the combat out as if it were a PvP encounter instead of a PvE one with the DM playing the role of a sophisticated scripter to keep combat interesting and immersive, then it doesn't really matter what the combat system is.

4th Edition Monster Manual wrote:A mummy lord uses plague of doom against a foe before entering melee combat. It stays close to an ally while making shielding mace attacks, focusing on enemies that target it with fire or radiant attacks. It uses awe strike to immobilize a slippery foe and unholy aid to remove a particularly debilitating condition (such as blinded or stunned). Once bloodied, the mummy lord spends its action point to use second wind.

Amra wrote:I thought the whole point of 4E was that the DM actually IS just a script-running engine? You get the tactics you're supposed to use handed on a plate.

4E DMG wrote:Smart Monsters: Smart monsters act differently
in combat than dumb ones do. Look at the monster’s Intelligence score to help you decide what it does. Smart creatures plan their actions and choose the best course of action. A vampire might focus its attacks on the cleric who keeps hitting it with radiant damage. Less intelligent creatures don’t plan, they react. A wolf turns to bite the last opponent that hurt it or the nearest enemy.

4E DMG wrote: Don’t hit people when they’re down. When a character
falls unconscious, monsters turn their attention to enemies who are still up and fighting. Monsters don’t usually intentionally deal damage to fallen foes.

violence in the media wrote:I think this is just yet another reason why the supposedly "balanced" 4e sucks balls. If your system can't handle the DM playing a level-appropriate challenge to the hilt (which the players are assumed to win!) then you have no basis for calling it balanced, regardless of the relationship between the wizard and the fighter.

Amra wrote: Ugh. Cognitive dissonance sets in. Surely Mr. Badass Mummy Lord is going to say "Minions! Make certain of fallen foes, lest they get up again for no apparent reason and make once more with the kicking of my bandage-wrapped ass! Gank them, my undead hordes, gank them!", isn't he? I mean, assuming he's got numbers and therefore actions on his side?

RandomCasualty2 wrote:4E tried too hard to keep every player in game at all times I think with its healing paradigm. Sometimes a monster has to be able to disable a PC for an encounter. The problem wiuth 4E is the only way to disable a PC is to kill him.

Boolean wrote:Actually I'm pretty sure refusing t hit foes who are down is rational in 4E since you can't do enough damage to kill them and all the damage you've done will be automatically negated by the first heal.

Winning the HP attrition war means hitting those who are up.