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Thank you guys for being way cooler than the CharOP forums on WotC. I'm not sure why I even bothered posting in that hellhole. : Say guys, how do I help my wife put out better fire damage? : Your wife has low system mastery if she's trying to do fire! Fire can't be optimized at all and is infinitely inferior to thunder or lightning. Also she needs to be a tiefling.
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Jun 6, 2011 18:42
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-Fish- posted:Thank you guys for being way cooler than the CharOP forums on WotC. I'm not sure why I even bothered posting in that hellhole.  Fire, like Poison, has a feat that says "you ignore immunities". How is that not being taken into consideration?
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Jun 6, 2011 18:46
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adaz posted:
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Jun 6, 2011 18:47
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adaz posted:For most non-striker classes taking a 20 would be retarded, and even taking an 18 (before racials) might be too much. Controllers need to hit to control enemies, and one important role of a controller is minion control, which you can't do well if you can't hit them. (In fact my wizard has a mere 18 Int due to what seemed like a good idea at the time, and I have been chewed out by my party members for failing to kill minions fast enough due to my low accuracy.) Leaders need to hit to trigger a lot of their buffs: see the taclord who drops strength to boost int, and then never hits with Lead the Attack. Also many leaders add their primary stat to their healing, which is very useful. Defenders are maybe the strongest case for taking an 18 instead of a 20, since they do need defenses, but they tend to rely on attacking for their mark enforcement, so if you can't hit or deal damage, it doesn't matter how invulnerable you are, your friends will die anyway. Exceptions to this are the Paladin, who adds his primary stat to his mark enforcement damage, and the Battlemind, whose best defender feature is that he gets to take a 20 in Con. tl;dr it is in fact you who is retarded
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Jun 6, 2011 18:47
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Locus Cosecant posted:tl;dr it is in fact you who is retarded
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Jun 6, 2011 18:52
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Locus Cosecant posted:Controllers need to hit to control enemies, and one important role of a controller is minion control, which you can't do well if you can't hit them. (In fact my wizard has a mere 18 Int due to what seemed like a good idea at the time, and I have been chewed out by my party members for failing to kill minions fast enough due to my low accuracy.) Leaders need to hit to trigger a lot of their buffs: see the taclord who drops strength to boost int, and then never hits with Lead the Attack. Also many leaders add their primary stat to their healing, which is very useful. Defenders are maybe the strongest case for taking an 18 instead of a 20, since they do need defenses, but they tend to rely on attacking for their mark enforcement, so if you can't hit or deal damage, it doesn't matter how invulnerable you are, your friends will die anyway. Exceptions to this are the Paladin, who adds his primary stat to his mark enforcement damage, and the Battlemind, whose best defender feature is that he gets to take a 20 in Con. Considering most defenders, especially fighters, get bonus to their OAs through class features or feats, you really really don't need 18 in primary stat (I roll a with a 17 on my dwarven defender, works fine.) Also, we are talking about a 5% greater chance to hit, for which you are then giving up a 10-15% chance to be hit yourself by an enemy attack. also, as pointed out by MadScientistWorking if you really bother nothing at all with any sort of secondary NADs as a defender you will be hosed in paragon tier because you will be permanently dazed, unable to do OAs at all. Or really any class, as you hit paragon and epic and nearly every monster imposes some effect like dazed, dominate, stun, immobilize, slow, etc you will find those low NADs terrible. I'm not saying there isn't a case for 20s, but it's not nearly as clearcut universal as you are making it out to be. It's a 5% increase over 18, and you give up a huge amount of secondary riders & defenses to get it. Gomi posted:
Burn Everything feat? Doesn't let you quite ignore everything but close to it http://www.wizards.com/dndinsider/compendium/feat.aspx?id=3068 adaz fucked around with this message at 19:02 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 18:55
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MadScientistWorking posted:No. Adaz is right. If you never run into problems with this suicidal tactic then your DM is babying you. "Suicidal"? The difference between 20-16-10 and 18-18-12 is an extra point on each of your lower NADs (and a loss of a point on your highest!), and depending on what stats those are possibly an extra 2 hp and a surge. Those things are nice to have, but it's not "suicidal" to go without them, especially when they cost you something like 10% of your offensive combat effectiveness. Have you done any math, here? Anecdotal data, but in my game it was never the characters with 20s in their primary stats that died. I certainly wasn't babying anyone, but when the ranger without a 20 in his primary stat tried to use disrupting shot to counter the enemy's attack, he missed and died. Anecdotal evidence, but soemthing to think about.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:01
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adaz posted:It's a 5% increase over 18, and you give up a huge amount of secondary riders & defenses to get it. You give up a net of one point of defenses. That's not huge.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:01
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Locus Cosecant posted:You give up a net of one point of defenses. That's not huge. We're saying 20 pre-racials or post racials? because it's possible I've been mis interpreting you
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Jun 6, 2011 19:03
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adaz posted:We're saying 20 pre-racials or post racials? because it's possible I've been mis interpreting you 20 pre-racials is impossible, so................ ............... ...............
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Jun 6, 2011 19:03
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Dropping a point from the highest NAD -- which for a lot of classes is going to be higher than AC -- to boost each of the other NADs by a point is totally worth doing.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:04
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Locus Cosecant posted:20 pre-racials is impossible, so................ I was thinking in terms of paragon tier starting since that's where we start. But, it isn't quite as clearcut as a +1 NAD difference because the extra points can qualify you, as a defender, for the cool superior will/reflex/fortitude talents that you won't be able to qualify for until much later if you run an 18
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Jun 6, 2011 19:05
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AlphaDog posted:I just read in a previous post in this thread that PHB-only Warlocks are very underpowered. That's disappointing, I wanted to play one. My group hasn't played a whole heap of 4th ed, and we've decided that we're going to stick to the core rulebooks when we do play, so things don't get out of hand like they did in our 2nd ed days. I'd really strongly consider buying one month's worth of a subscription to the DDI, or using the offline character builder that MustacheRide has been updating. It's pretty cheap and it'll let you peek around at the new class/character options without spending money on buying books, at least until you're more sure about what you may or may not want.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:06
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Gomi posted:Dropping a point from the highest NAD -- which for a lot of classes is going to be higher than AC -- to boost each of the other NADs by a point is totally worth doing. Agreed! If it didn't cost you +1 to hit, +1 to damage, +1 to your highest skills, +1 to healing, +1 to divine challenge damage, et cetera, I would be all over it. But that's a really high cost to pay for a mildly beneficial trade! Now that it's been demonstrated that Adaz doesn't know what the gently caress he's talking about, maybe you should just drop the subject?
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Jun 6, 2011 19:09
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Locus Cosecant posted:Agreed! If it didn't cost you +1 to hit, +1 to damage, +1 to your highest skills, +1 to healing, +1 to divine challenge damage, et cetera, I would be all over it. But that's a really high cost to pay for a mildly beneficial trade! Now that it's been demonstrated that Adaz doesn't know what the gently caress he's talking about, maybe you should just drop the subject? MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:17 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 19:14
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MadScientistWorking posted:Nah. Some of those are kind of frivolous to try and maximize. Also, you picked a class that technically can technically has four different ability scores to optimize. Which of those are frivolous. be specific
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Jun 6, 2011 19:18
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Locus Cosecant posted:Agreed! If it didn't cost you +1 to hit, +1 to damage, +1 to your highest skills, +1 to healing, +1 to divine challenge damage, et cetera, I would be all over it. But that's a really high cost to pay for a mildly beneficial trade! Now that it's been demonstrated that Adaz doesn't know what the gently caress he's talking about, maybe you should just drop the subject? Depending on the class or role you might not really care about the damage that much and as has been mentioned a 5% greater chance to be dazed or stunned instead of a 5% greater chance to hit can be a tradeoff that a character might want to take. Feat pre-reqs, hybridizing, and so forth might also cause you to want a lower than 20 in your primary ability. Skills are a fair point, and one I hadn't considered although usually by paragon ish tier your primary skill will be high enough to succeed most checks with a fairly low roll. adaz fucked around with this message at 19:25 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 19:23
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Danhenge posted:Which of those are frivolous. be specific MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 19:34 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 19:30
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MadScientistWorking posted:Well for one thing there are easier ways to get better healing, better skills, and better damage output. The only real thing that he has a point is the two hit but with certain classes like the Paladin don't necessarily want to dump all your stats into the primary. Why not? I did it, haven't had any reason to think it was a bad idea so far (level 18). Strength paladin, no less, so not even particularly optimized otherwise.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:33
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Are swarm druids viable as a optimized party controller? It seems like the powers that they come attached to generally just do more damage instead of tacking on effects. Is there a good build for them?
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Jun 6, 2011 19:34
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I quoted you before you edited so I'll just note that as a paladin, you've already got very large pool of healing surges and a good sized healing surge without any additional Con. As a Paladin without Lay on Hands I pretty frequently find myself with several extra surges when the rest of the party is nearing depletion even if I've done a decent job as a defender in all the fights we've had. I can't imagine you'd value a single extra use of lay on hands over hitting more often.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:41
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Danhenge posted:I can't imagine you'd value a single extra use of lay on hands over hitting more often. MadScientistWorking fucked around with this message at 20:04 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 19:55
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Locus Cosecant posted:Agreed! If it didn't cost you +1 to hit, +1 to damage, +1 to your highest skills, +1 to healing, +1 to divine challenge damage, et cetera, I would be all over it. But that's a really high cost to pay for a mildly beneficial trade! Now that it's been demonstrated that Adaz doesn't know what the gently caress he's talking about, maybe you should just drop the subject? Of those, the only thing that's a real loss is +1 to hit, which really shouldn't matter with a DM who knows encounter design. +1 to a skill is pretty trivial -- +1 to a push (fairly common off-stat rider effect) or teleport, or +1 to a monster's to-hit penalty (also a pretty common rider effect), are all well worth it. I mean, if you're going to include everything affected by dropping the mainstat, be fair and include everything affected by raising the offstat.
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Jun 6, 2011 19:59
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If I could just derail the 20vs18 argument for a moment... My group met up for board games yesterday and we discussed the plan for the campaign I mentioned in the last thread. It's going to be a kind of ancient Greek setting with the gods warring with each other and PCs are Heralds of the Gods, where we have the ability to gain power by increasing our fame and/or the fame of our patron diety (so boons/inherent bonuses/levels, etc basically). We're also starting at 3rd level. And the group decided to play a more "morally ambiguous" (read: evil) party. So that changed a few of my assumptions. So far we've got a Blackguard, Taclord, and a Swordmage/Warden hybrid. The last guy is probably going to pick a controller or striker. I think I'm going with a Revenant Hexblade (sorry adaz, we won't be BM bros  ). My reasoning is that we already have a standup melee brawler in the BG, and HB gives me a nice MBA for the Taclord to abuse (also, I'm digging the idea of having sold part of my soul to Hades for another shot at life and sweet magic powers).Anyway, that was a really long way to ask: Does anyone have any experience with Hexblades? How do the pacts stack up? I'm currently looking at the Fey pact and then MC'ing Rogue for some of the martial light blade feats, but I'm open to suggestions. ImpactVector fucked around with this message at 20:07 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 20:05
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Gomi posted:Of those, the only thing that's a real loss is +1 to hit, which really shouldn't matter with a DM who knows encounter design. +1 to a skill is pretty trivial -- +1 to a push (fairly common off-stat rider effect) or teleport, or +1 to a monster's to-hit penalty (also a pretty common rider effect), are all well worth it. I mean, if you're going to include everything affected by dropping the mainstat, be fair and include everything affected by raising the offstat. You're taking -1 to hit to give a monster -1 to hit, if you hit? Surely if the DM "knows encounter design" (i.e. ignores your stats and just decides whether or not you hit arbitrarily), giving the monster a -1 to hit really shouldn't matter? You piece of poo poo.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:13
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Locus Cosecant posted:You're taking -1 to hit to give a monster -1 to hit, if you hit? Surely if the DM "knows encounter design" (i.e. ignores your stats and just decides whether or not you hit arbitrarily), giving the monster a -1 to hit really shouldn't matter? You piece of poo poo. I'm not going to be able to give that dodge of everything else in my post better than a C-. Maybe the extra credit for the troll/personal attack can bring it up to a C and you can graduate from Angry Internet Guy university??
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Jun 6, 2011 20:17
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If you have a particular power that you intend to spam over and over that has a strong rider (Psion and Dishearten, I am looking at you), then it can make sense to go 18-18 rather than 20-16. I've always said that there are specific circumstances that can make it the right choice. I'm just saying you should have a strong reason in mind if you are not taking a 20 in your primary stat, and it is far, far, far from a "retarded" choice.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:19
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Locus Cosecant posted:If you have a particular power that you intend to spam over and over that has a strong rider (Psion and Dishearten, I am looking at you), then it can make sense to go 18-18 rather than 20-16. I've always said that there are specific circumstances that can make it the right choice. I'm just saying you should have a strong reason in mind if you are not taking a 20 in your primary stat, and it is far, far, far from a "retarded" choice. Whoa this is a reasonable statement that I can agree with. It's hard to say "See how discussion can happen when you're aren't being Super Angry Guy and cussing dudes out for having different opinions" without sounding condescending, so I'm pretty much not gonna try.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:21
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Gomi posted:I'm not going to be able to give that dodge of everything else in my post better than a C-. Maybe the extra credit for the troll/personal attack can bring it up to a C and you can graduate from Angry Internet Guy university?? I addressed more of your points than you did of mine, but that's really beside the point. I'm not interested in convincing you, I know that's not possible. I'm just trying to keep you from doing too much damage to someone who innocently, naively comes into the 4e CharOp thread looking for CharOp advice and sees you talking about how bonuses to hit are useless.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:21
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Locus Cosecant posted:I addressed more of your points than you did of mine, but that's really beside the point. I'm not interested in convincing you, I know that's not possible. I'm just trying to keep you from doing too much damage to someone who innocently, naively comes into the 4e CharOp thread looking for CharOp advice and sees you talking about how bonuses to hit are useless. Yes. That is exactly what I said instead of talking about how sometimes it is worth it to drop your to-hit chance by 5% to boost some other stuff by a small amount. Bonuses to hit are useless. Elegant summation of the position.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:24
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Gomi posted:
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Jun 6, 2011 20:26
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Gomi posted:Yes. That is exactly what I said instead of talking about how sometimes it is worth it to drop your to-hit chance by 5% to boost some other stuff by a small amount. Bonuses to hit are useless. Elegant summation of the position. "+1 to hit, which really shouldn't matter with a DM who knows encounter design". You literally said this. This is a direct quotation of a post you made, on this same page.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:26
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theironjef posted:Are swarm druids viable as a optimized party controller? It seems like the powers that they come attached to generally just do more damage instead of tacking on effects. Is there a good build for them? Swarm Druids, in my limited experience playing one, slant more towards defender/controllers thanks to their DR and feat support. IS that what you wanted to play, or did you want more controller-y? Locus Cosecant posted:I'm just saying you should have a strong reason in mind if you are not taking a 20 in your primary stat, and it is far, far, far from a "retarded" choice. This is what I was trying to say basically, there are reasons you don't want a 20 and depending on your build it can even be the better choice to just have an 18. adaz fucked around with this message at 20:31 on Jun 6, 2011 |
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Jun 6, 2011 20:27
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adaz posted:This is what I was trying to say basically, there are reasons you don't want a 20 and depending on your build it can even be the better choice to just have an 18. Well, it may have been what you were trying to say, but what you ended up saying was "For most non-striker classes taking a 20 would be retarded". You might consider remedial English classes!
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Jun 6, 2011 20:33
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Definitely trying to slant towards actual controller. Is there a good druid build in general for that? I figure probably the regular caster ones, whatever they're called.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:34
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Locus Cosecant posted:I addressed more of your points than you did of mine, but that's really beside the point. I'm not interested in convincing you, I know that's not possible. I'm just trying to keep you from doing too much damage to someone who innocently, naively comes into the 4e CharOp thread looking for CharOp advice and sees you talking about how bonuses to hit are useless.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:35
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theironjef posted:Definitely trying to slant towards actual controller. Is there a good druid build in general for that? I figure probably the regular caster ones, whatever they're called. Well, every druid has some beast form and some regular caster powers. And some of the best controller druid powers are beast form, like Thorn Spray which is a blast 5 huge defense debuff.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:38
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ImpactVector posted:Anyway, that was a really long way to ask: Does anyone have any experience with Hexblades? How do the pacts stack up? I'm currently looking at the Fey pact and then MC'ing Rogue for some of the martial light blade feats, but I'm open to suggestions. Winter Court and Sneak of Shadows should work pretty well. Among other things, you can make very good use of the Wintertouched/Lasting Frost combo. Just make sure your primary stat is set up right!!!!!! 
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Jun 6, 2011 20:40
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Locus Cosecant posted:"+1 to hit, which really shouldn't matter with a DM who knows encounter design". You literally said this. This is a direct quotation of a post you made, on this same page. Yes, 'losing +1 to hit (to gain other bonuses)' maps precisely to '+hit bonuses are irrelevant'. No, wait, it's a wild distortion of the original statement. Why do you hate the idea that a DM should be good at encounter design? If a party has a lot of fire damage output, making most of your encounters have high fire resist or immunity is a dick move, for instance. So is throwing monsters that can only be hit on 15s and better. A DM should know the capabilities of the party and take them into account guided by experience -- if they're using forced movement to pinball things into flanking or bad zones, maybe the occasional monster that reduces forced moves by 1 or has an immediate reaction to forced movement would make for an interesting problem. If the guy playing the fire mage really likes burning things, throw in the occasional guy with resist to other stuff but vulnerable 5 fire to let him shine. A hypothetical all-20-mainstat party is going to hit more often and have weaker riders. This makes encounter design slightly (slightly!) different from an 18-mainstat party that misses more and has stronger riders -- the different NADs and stronger pushes/penalties result in different fight outcomes from the same encounter. There are also classes (PHB Wizard comes to mind) where a lot of powers have no offstat riders at all, and a build specializing in those powers has a very strong case for a 20 mainstat -- there the only benefit does come from boosting NADs and/or HP, which I'd consider not worth it for a Controller.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:41
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Gomi posted:Why do you hate the idea that a DM should be good at encounter design? Good golly that's a loaded question! Next you'll be asking me why I hate freedom, or when I stopped beating my wife.
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Jun 6, 2011 20:44
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