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I can't speak to 4th edition specifically, but in every game I've played of other editions, controller-type characters were far more useful than another DPS. If you're fighting enemies that one character can reliably kill in a single round of attacks, then sure, I guess controllers are pretty bad. But I've almost never had that happen. Even at low levels, where you're fighting enemies that are often one good roll away from death, your team often is as well. A good color spray or entangle can make an absolutely massive difference in a fight.
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Jan 25, 2023 18:58
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I'd also venture, based on nothing more than my own experience, that controllers become more useful as fights take more turns. If the typical mook fight is over in 2-3 turns, it's usually better to just power through with damage and prevent incoming damage by dropping the mooks faster than it is to keep a mook locked up until someone who can do damage gets to them.
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Jan 25, 2023 18:59
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I guess the difference is that our group (regardless of who's DMing/which campaign we're playing) rarely has "mook fights" where the only thing we're fighting is easily-killed low-level enemies. Those usually get handwaved away because they're utterly boring.
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Jan 25, 2023 19:10
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I wonder how that plays in 4E, which has attrition baked into its systems in a fairly major way. Then again, everyone saves dailies for the big encounters anyway, so its really only healing surges that mook encounters threaten eating up.
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Jan 25, 2023 19:13
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I mean if fight is going to last 2-3 rounds and there's literally little danger, do you need one more DPS? Granted I've only played single 5th edition campaign (Ravenloft) as a controller Wizard, but I never felt I needed to do more dps. I had My top 3 controller moments: 3. Counterspelling everything. Fireball? Counterspelled, Another fireball? Another counterspell. Finger of death? Counterspelled. 2. Paralyzing Baba Yaga before she had time to act and awaken her hut to fight. She never got to do anything. 1. Polymorphing into a T-Rex and Grappling hapless Strahd in my teeth. Chomp. Technically this is a damage spell, but I did it mostly for fun. Also webbed lot of zombies/wolves and other critters, greased many spots and cast cantrips rest of the time. Also raised Zombies just for fun. They never amounted to anything, but had some fun discussions about morality of it. edit: Totally forgot about Sleep. MVP on the lower levels. Issaries fucked around with this message at 19:23 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 19:17
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controllers own because they do wacky poo poo that makes the game more fun and that encourages me to adlib more fun stuff
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Jan 25, 2023 19:19
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Controllers are invaluable in a game where the characters often need to be able to run away. Like especially if they can create difficult or hindering terrain. And in some games they're just encounter-enders (see: Sleep). I'm also increasingly thinking it's a trap to design a game, even a tactical battle game like D&D 4e, to focus on ending encounters quickly with as few resources spent as possible as the goal that PCs are struggling for. I'd rather have an interesting combat than a trivialized one. If my party is all DPS monsters, the GM is gonna ramp up difficulty to keep the encounters interesting, and that may well mean introducing things that a controller can deal with better than just another warlock. In other words, a somewhat natural progression from "just do more damage, it's always best" is a game with parameters that discourage that mode increasingly applied until the players are forced to agree that other roles are necessary. And to me that probably is going to be a more interesting encounter than one where it's just my glass cannons & tanks vs. their glass cannons & tanks.
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Jan 25, 2023 19:21
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ninjahedgehog posted:I don't think 4e ever really nailed the Controller role, like so many computer games before it. Why bother applying extra status effects when the best one of all is "dead," so just bring an extra Striker instead and get to that endpoint faster. The struggle with Controller is that it's defined around codifying "whatever a wizard is supposed to do" into a coherent role, when that could mean "literally everything and anything except increasing hitpoints lmao," although I guess they managed it when they designed a class that doesn't have existing 3.x baggage, i.e. Invoker. Controller is probably the strongest role to double-up on, though, since their imposed penalties almost always stack together, while leaders need allies to lead, defenders need someone to defend, and strikers just generally lack "No" buttons to impede Team Monster. Controllers also have excellent sustained damage per round, too, since their weak base damage gets spread around 3+ enemies each turn, and base damage dice means very little in the long run anyways, although chipping 3+ monsters a turn is I guess not going to kill any one of them in a hurry. In theory, a team of 4 controllers of some color can heap a comatose Team Monster into 3x3 square, not unlike in 3.x, so they're definitely not lacking, but it's probably harder to quantify their control effects when "hits prevented" is by definition an invisible metric, and the party rogue decides to walk into reach of the harmless, immobilized ogre anyways. I guess if there's one big disconnect, it's that a non-zero number of players will insist on playing "a wizard that casts fireballs" and won't accept having "sorcerer" written on their character sheet instead of "wizard," but I guess it's not that different from the same players in 3.x casting damaging Evocations instead of crippling Save or Dies.
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Jan 25, 2023 19:25
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Leperflesh posted:Controllers are invaluable in a game where the characters often need to be able to run away. Like especially if they can create difficult or hindering terrain. And in some games they're just encounter-enders (see: Sleep). This happened in our modern-day one shot this week, the party was in a car chase with an assassin and once they got in range, the wizard just cast Tasha's Hideous Laughter on the driver and they instantly crashed the car
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Jan 25, 2023 19:25
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I never used straight, minion only encounters in my 4e games very often. They're much better at forcing the casters or support characters to make decisions that aren't only dominating the scariest thing in the encounter. Of course then I had someone playing a melee striker specialize insanely hard into horde management so sometimes I would swarm the group so they had a chance to really shine. In 4e they must be dealt with because they're still threatening but they're also not that difficult to take out. They're mobile action sinks. If they're taking healing surges from a group they're probably trying to ignore them because "they only have 1hp."
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Jan 25, 2023 19:26
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You have to remember that minions still do full damage in 4e but they only have 1 hitpoint. So getting rid of a bunch in one round might be worth a daily if there were a room full of them.
nelson fucked around with this message at 19:29 on Jan 25, 2023 |
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Jan 25, 2023 19:27
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Yeah and controllers aren't only about AOEs. Being able to, for example, summon a thing that can provide flanking, is essentially a buff for the party's primary DPS guys. Controllers may have abilities to shove and pull enemies and allies around like chess pieces. I look at the word "controller" and to me it really means "battlefield utility" more than "does a little damage in an area effect".
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Jan 25, 2023 19:30
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Taeke posted:I'll ask again since last time my question was snowed under by the ongoing conversation at the time but has anyone started using those art AIs to make battlemaps yet? There's this which is sort of AI? https://store.steampowered.com/app/1588530/Dungeon_Alchemist/
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Jan 25, 2023 19:32
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4e controllers all did some variation of ridiculous poo poo that will frustrate your DM to no end (except Seeker, seeker was kind of trash). Psions were great for turning your monsters into weapons and also nuking their attack bonuses into oblivion from level 1. Wizards are also similar. Yeah, the have AoE effects but they can also get your brute to attack your other creatures willy-nilly. Invokers had a strong amount of dazes/stuns and enough hard crowd control to let the rest of the party do your dirty work for you. I never played with druids but I do not doubt that they have large amounts of bullshit in their kit.
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Jan 25, 2023 20:12
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The controllers in my player group is invaluable. Controllers are if anything underestimated in terms of their usefulness. Dealing enough damage to kill something fast is great, but often times you're not dealing enough damage to do that, or the odds are against your team in terms of actions taken in a turn. Controllers shine in these situations. Being able to at-will blast 3+ minions off the board, inflict harmful conditions easily (stun and daze are absolutely devastating in 4e, especially against solo creatures and brutes), being able to mind control enemies, move them around, and being able to target weaker dudes while simultaneously plinking away at the big bad is incredible. We have two controlls (Invoker and Wizard) and they're both badass. The invoker has some really incredible powers, like making areas of enemies take 5 additional damage per hit, dropping stuns/dazes across the map, and having a few respectable damage abilities up his sleeve as well. His summon angel of fire ability has come in clutch routinely, as it forms another body that soaks up 2-3 hits and provides flanking bonuses. The wizard can move enemies incredible distances, oftentimes over ledges, can mind control enemies to make them attack their allies, and drop the occasional fireball for a big AOE damage pile (in our last encounter of the campaign we ran, at level 8, she did a total of 90 damage between 4 creatures with a single fireball).
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Jan 25, 2023 20:23
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I know D&D is not really the game for it but I feel like Controller skills are also good for heist missions, stealthy stuff, and situations where you want to subdue nonlethally. Honestly, the tension pool concept might be the way to go the next time I run a sneaking mission kind of thing for my players.
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Jan 25, 2023 21:02
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I never used to buy into controllers either, until someone on a NWN persistent server suggested using grease on chokepoints and my god did I very suddenly see the point.
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Jan 25, 2023 22:33
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I never realized how powerful Grease could be until I started playing the Kingmaker CRPG-- at least on the tabletop it's way more clear which tiles are greased up and which aren't.
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Jan 25, 2023 23:44
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I think my best Controller moment was when my Sorcerer used Telekinesis to shutdown different enemies during a boss battle; they still had resources, like one enemy used Steel Wind Strike to get around it, but that still forced them to use a resource at a inconvenient time for them rather than at an inconvenient time for us. I felt like I was contributing to an interesting combat puzzle.
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Jan 25, 2023 23:52
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Bobby Deluxe posted:I never used to buy into controllers either, until someone on a NWN persistent server suggested using grease on chokepoints and my god did I very suddenly see the point. ninjahedgehog posted:I never realized how powerful Grease could be until I started playing the Kingmaker CRPG-- at least on the tabletop it's way more clear which tiles are greased up and which aren't. I learned the power of controllers from playing the Gold Box games where Sleep would dominate early encounters.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:01
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why would you play DnD with a controller? it's a tabletop game...cant plug your dang dualshock into anything.....
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Jan 26, 2023 00:02
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Wether or not it's better to bring more damage instead of control, when you crunch the numbers, doesn't matter to me. We're not power gamers looking for the best and most efficient solution as if we're super invested WoW raiders or whatever. We're a bunch of friends having fun creating interesting stories, and as the posts above me illustrate, controllers make for fun and interesting battles and stories. Which reminds me, Twin Spelling a Polymorph to turn me and my buddy into T-Rexes and just going to town was one of the high points in the last campaign I didn't DM. The other was the session when my character was hit by an exhaust effect that removed all emotional affect, so I just deadpanned and sighed and acted uninterested all game, which was the opposite of his normal personality (divine soul sorcerer styled after those megachurch pastors) so it made for a hilarious change of pace.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:09
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The gap is a little more obviously wider between invoker and controller because even if there's a lot of enemies the damage of a single fireball might not really do much to affect the outcome of a fight while Grease, Fog Cloud, Force Cage, and various Control spells etc when used well absolutely do.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:20
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arsenicCatnip posted:why would you play DnD with a controller? it's a tabletop game...cant plug your dang dualshock into anything..... Because I was playing Pool of Radiance on the NES and had no other choice, okay.
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Jan 26, 2023 00:57
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arsenicCatnip posted:why would you play DnD with a controller? it's a tabletop game...cant plug your dang dualshock into anything..... He was talking about NWN, so he must've used a controller in Neverwinter Nights to cast Grease. Not my preferred way to go, either. NWN was cool because you could control the entire game with your mouse hand, and use the other hand to hold a sandwich or whatever. Why would I downgrade to a controller which forces me to use 2 hands???
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Jan 26, 2023 03:06
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PeterWeller posted:I learned the power of controllers from playing the Gold Box games where Sleep would dominate early encounters. Old gold box rpgs also had Save vs death abilities on enemies that were like 1/2 or 1/4th level critters, so worth next to no exp. But there were lot of them per encounter. Modern day DND players got it easy.
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Jan 26, 2023 06:41
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Finster Dexter posted:He was talking about NWN, so he must've used a controller in Neverwinter Nights to cast Grease. Not my preferred way to go, either. NWN was cool because you could control the entire game with your mouse hand, and use the other hand to hold a sandwich or whatever. Why would I downgrade to a controller which forces me to use 2 hands???
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Jan 26, 2023 08:30
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Issaries posted:Old gold box rpgs also had Save vs death abilities on enemies that were like 1/2 or 1/4th level critters, so worth next to no exp. But there were lot of them per encounter. Save vs death was just one of the five normal saving throws. Bobby Deluxe posted:No no, he was playing co-op with a person in charge of an organisation's finances. 
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Jan 26, 2023 10:49
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Well, I finished my first ever campaign last night. Overall the campaign was an alright experience (if maybe a bit long because we had something like 7-8 players), though the ending was unfortunately a letdown that ended with a ‘rocks fall, everyone dies (and then gets raised as undead)’ scenario because the GM was going to have to go on hiatus and the session ran late. Still, I’m glad I took the opportunity, and even managed to get to level 4 Paladin. If/when I give it another swing, what’s considered one of the easier casters for a newish player to get into? Just keeping an open mind if I decide to shake it up
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Jan 27, 2023 00:50
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My players love controller game play but sometimes it lessens impact a lot. I had an encounter yesterday that consisted of a alt-universe ridiculous mustache twirling 'evil' version of the party that had a Barbarian in it and she didn't get to act in over 6 rounds of combat thanks to a combination of
It was both hella cool from their side, and they felt awesome locking her down, but it also meant the encounter wasn't as threatening as it should have been. My bad for not prepping for it. On that note, Hypnotic Pattern. This is an ability/spell I would never use against a player, it's so drat unfair!
I mostly have someone in an encounter with a high WIS save to resist it because it's the Bards signature turn 1 but you can still roll bad sometimes! Phrosphor fucked around with this message at 01:08 on Jan 27, 2023 |
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Jan 27, 2023 01:05
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Phrosphor posted:It was both hella cool from their side, and they felt awesome locking her down, but it also meant the encounter wasn't as threatening as it should have been. My bad for not prepping for it. Honestly, if the players reduce the threat of an encounter, let them have it. You don’t have to prep for every eventuality and that can feel unfun to players if the one or two things they’re good at are nullified every encounter. I’ve had a DM do this and it sucks. It also means that you may well be overtuning and the second those powerful abilities roll poorly the encounter goes from challenging to grim REAL fast.
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Jan 27, 2023 02:31
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Saxophone posted:Honestly, if the players reduce the threat of an encounter, let them have it. You don’t have to prep for every eventuality and that can feel unfun to players if the one or two things they’re good at are nullified every encounter. Agreed. I was annoyed watching critical role when at great expense the party set a trap that killed 3 of the evil party and seriously injured a fourth (who was killed later), but when they fought the final guy it was still a very challenging encounter because he'd gotten more mooks. It's possible that if they hadn't killed the first 4 guys the end battle would have been flat out impossible, but that isn't how it felt. It felt like all their scheming was pointless dithering and the final battle was going to be equally difficult no matter what they did to prepare for it. So it would be cool for tv? If I spend a bunch of time weakening the enemy and then the final battle is a cake walk I'm happy, because it shows I was smart and did a good job weakening the enemy.
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Jan 27, 2023 02:49
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Facebook Aunt posted:Agreed. I was annoyed watching critical role when at great expense the party set a trap that killed 3 of the evil party and seriously injured a fourth (who was killed later), but when they fought the final guy it was still a very challenging encounter because he'd gotten more mooks. It's good to be reminded of this. It's easy for me to get stuck in the mindset of 'If it isn't hard, if there isn't the danger of death, then they aren't having fun!'
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Jan 27, 2023 03:16
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Phrosphor posted:It's good to be reminded of this. It's easy for me to get stuck in the mindset of 'If it isn't hard, if there isn't the danger of death, then they aren't having fun!' Yeah, I absolutely get that. I feel like everyone I’ve ever played with or DMed for, at the end of the day, want to do ridiculous poo poo and tell cool stories together. Challenge is good. But dismantling a hard encounter can in itself be just as challenging as the encounter and both have a big payoff by the end.
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Jan 27, 2023 03:28
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Regalingualius posted:If/when I give it another swing, what’s considered one of the easier casters for a newish player to get into? Just keeping an open mind if I decide to shake it up I don’t know if it’s the easiest or not but Bard is a ton of fun. Just remember you’re there to make your party mates look good and the enemies look incompetent. You’re not going to be doing much direct damage yourself.
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Jan 27, 2023 03:52
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nelson posted:I don’t know if it’s the easiest or not but Bard is a ton of fun. Just remember you’re there to make your party mates look good and the enemies look incompetent. You’re not going to be doing much direct damage yourself. I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun playing a character as I have my current goblin bard. Highlights so far have been: -Using suggestion to convince the guard captain that he doesn’t actually care that our ranger just stole his sword -Hypnotic Pattern on the session’s mini-boss so we could deal with his minions -Using persuasion to convince a dying ogre that he was actually already dead (side note: our DM is willing to play fast and loose with the rules sometimes, especially when he thinks it’s rad) -Performing a song in a bar so well that I am now part owner of said bar -And my personal favorite: polymorphing a giant raven into a penguin while on an airship, causing it to splat on the ground several hundred feet below Can I do the most damage in the party? No. Can I have a huge impact on combat otherwise? Oh hell yes. So my suggestion is Bard.
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Jan 27, 2023 04:30
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A Real Horse posted:-Using persuasion to convince a dying ogre that he was actually already dead Taking "You're already dead!" to another level!
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Jan 27, 2023 04:35
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I tpk'd a party on the first floor of the mansion in the first chapter of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. Giant centipedes 3d6 poison damage at level 1 on a failed con save? What?
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Jan 27, 2023 04:37
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A Real Horse posted:I don’t think I’ve ever had as much fun playing a character as I have my current goblin bard. Highlights so far have been: Our Creation Bard spends most of their time flying around being held by a giant animated suit of armor they call 'Suity'. Other highlights include:
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Jan 27, 2023 04:53
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The Slack Lagoon posted:I tpk'd a party on the first floor of the mansion in the first chapter of Ghosts of Saltmarsh. If the centipedes don't get you the swarms of spiders will. Death house gets a bad rap, but that Saltmarsh house was like the end of Arachnophobia both times I ran it. It was just a few rooms in when my players figured out almost every point of interest was an opportunity for more bugs to swarm them, but what are you going to do, NOT investigate the loose stonework on all these fireplaces for treasure? I am doomed to make Lolth a villain in every campaign I suppose.
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Jan 27, 2023 06:27
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