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[DnD+GW 4E Discussion] Distinctly lacks anything to Jenga
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Make it a dwarf instead of a dragonborn and take toughness, durable and dwarven durability at paragon.
All that goodness and second wind as a minor
And the cloak that let's you spend two healing surges per 2nd wind.
Hey, this just happened in Trollhaunt! Quite effective.
Nethermancer actually isn't too bad. Necromancer is the one that suffers because the THP feature doesn't scale whatsoever. 2 temp HP at epic is just, well, why? Just, why?
THE NESTS!!!! THE NESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSTSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS!!!!!!!
This is pretty cool.
I haven't played this sort of defender against this new sort of lurker yet.
It does indeed sound dangerous metagamewise.
Yet also frikkin awesome in terms of challenge to the party as a whole.
Was it the Ogre Mage?
(or Oni or whatever the hell they're called now)
That looked pretty spiffy but I decided if I had to choose I'd rather go with a wizard because I think they have more options when it comes to powers and know rituals straight off the bat.
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The Pyromancer Mage I've been playing in Aegeri's Dark Sun game here (Initiate, perhaps you recall him from Aegeri's writeups) has been... kind of underwhelming for me so far. I'm playing him as an Arcane caster who is utterly devoted to the Spirit of Fire and has convinced everyone his powers are spiritual and not the least bit Arcane. He's got the Elemental Priest theme and I've been trying to make him a bit more Leadery, since it's Dark Sun and Aegeri has been keeping the encounters especially brutal.
The problem is, he's not really doing any of his jobs very well. I'm taking Fire-based powers for obvious reasons, which means he's not much of a Controller. The couple of Elemental Priest theme powers I've taken aren't really enough to make him much of a Leader. And his damage is pretty darn poor for a Striker. So instead of doing 1 role well or 2 rolls okay, he's doing 3 rolls very poorly. It was only in the last couple of sessions, with the introduction of the Hexblade to the group, that I've come to realize just how lacking I am in doing any job effectively.
Naturally, it seemed to me that a Tiefling Pyromancer should be pretty darn effective, and I must have been doing something wrong to be so mediocre in comparison. So I went to the WotC boards, and I think I found the big problem: Tiefling Pyromancer builds (or really, any kind of strikery caster build) seem highly dependent on magic items. Things like Staff of Ruin with Siberys Shard of the Mage, Dual Implement Spellcaster, stuff like that.
But this is Dark Sun, and magic items range from "very rare" to "you want a what now?" in availability. Even if I could have access to magic items, it seems like Pyromancers tend to use a Flaming Weapon for their implement so they can take "real" powers and still get the Fire keyword benefits. That just seems really cheap to me, and not at all the concept that I envisioned when I created the character.
So I guess my question is, should I stop kidding myself? Can I make a Wizard Striker that isn't going to drag the group down without using items? Failing that, is there a way I can make him more Leadery? I could probably turn him into a Controller without much trouble, but I'm pretty sure that would be giving up the character: Initiate's personality and background were not designed for the Enchantment or Illusion schools.
I don't have an up-to-date character sheet unfortunately, but here's one for level 3. Since then I've taken Leather Armor Proficiency and Hellfire Blood (Tiefling only, +1 to attack rolls with Fire and Fear powers) and the Elemental Priest level 5 Daily (conjures a bunch of elementals I can dismiss to give allies free attacks) and Fire Sea Travel (close burst 1 Fire damage and teleport 5 squares).
Any advice you folks can offer would be appreciated.
Second question, is your super cool, benevolent and all-around greatest DM ever, whatta guy (seriously!!) up for a mechanical rewrite?
I've had situations in the past where players in my game found that mechanically what they wanted to do with their character directly related to their roleplay concept just didn't work as expected. My number one rule of DMing is "are the players having fun"? If there's a player who's extremely unhappy with how their character is developing, I've allowed them to mechanically redo the class under very specific guidelines to stay in line with their roleplaying concept, but give them a character they feel happy playing.
I want to do everything I can to fully support players who go through the effort to craft a character, so I hate to see people punished who tried to make a concept work mechnically. I just hate seeing roleplayers lose out mechanically to guys who are all:
Bob: It's Bob!
DM: No, your characters name.
Bob: Oh, um. I never came up with one. I roll 2d4+8+2d8+5 on a sneak attack though. Do I have combat advantage?
DM: That's great. But how about a name?
Bob: Ok, I'll call him...Bob! Can I roll my damage now?
DM: /facepalm
Not saying that's anywhere near a player in your game, but it's very close to an actual situation I experienced in mine. Note, the above player would NOT be eligible for a mechanically reroll based on their character flavor.
Bob the Rogue has a niche in the game. Think of him as Deadpool from Marvel Comics. He's the only one who knows he's a D&D character. And as a result, probably appears basically insane or as someone to avoid talking with to those who live behind the fourth wall. He talks to some invisible imaginary friend of his (the DM) about rolling dice, damage, feats, etc.
Those who live behind that fourth wall, the characters played by the aforementioned roleplayers, don't really lose out to Bob the way I see it. To those characters, Bob is an extremely useful guy to have in a fight who might have some sort of serious mental disability.
The roleplayers actually get to play a part of the game Bob may not care about. Which is fine. Bob can just flip through some books at the table... essentially meaning his character is sitting there talking to himself probably.
When it's time to do anything other than stab people (a rather significant part of the game), give Bob a sandwich and tell him to keep quiet and think about numbers until his imaginary friend decides it's time to "roll dice"
I once played a Monk who (as far as he knew) was from the Soul Calibur setting.
Thing is, that's not what Bob is doing, so it takes all the genius out of the idea.
His way of playing a fantasy stabby mcstabberson dude is wrong!
Bob may not realize he is doing this.
But he is.
All the rest of the table has to do is realize this and treat his character that way.
And problem solved.
I don't want my joke to derail an otherwise serious question.
Given that wizards don't get a +damage striker mechanic, nothing you can do is going to push the damage up there. Are all the fire spells single target with zero control aspects, and mostly single target? Is that the problem here?
The Mage is primarily a Controller. Turning a Controller into a striker is probably something that you would need the right magic items to do. However...
...since you focus on fire spells: many of those are burst and blast attacks, which go for area damage rather than actual control. To "strike" well with them you probably need to be hitting more than one enemy every time you make an attack. Add up all the damage done by a single attack across all the enemies you're hitting, instead of thinking of how much damage you are dealing to just one of the targets. Are you up there with the striker when you do that? If so, the damage you're doing per round is probably okay.
My knee-jerk reaction would be to say something like: maybe what you want is a Sorcerer, dragon magic (fire). If you want an arcane striker that casts spells from a distance and focuses on a particular damage keyword, that would probably be the most obvious choice.
If you want some leadership ability and you don't seem to be getting it via your themes, you might consider what is available through skill utility powers or (if you're willing and able to spend the feats) multiclassing.
Last thought: if you want a character that fills multiple roles, perhaps consider a hybrid of some sort... that's kind of their thing. Striker/Controller or Striker/Leader, and if you want to 'minor' in a third role via theme or multiclassing you could also do that.
Barring such a complete rebuild of your character, though, you might just be out of luck. I would suggest either making some concessions to practicality and taking some off-theme controller powers or following shoe's excellent advice above.
If you're really devoted to theme and unable to make a big change of class and/or race, just focus on taking feats that push the big explosive striker idea. Things like Hellfire Arcanist and Destructive Wizardry would push your damage up some while staying in character, but they're not going to be enough to make a striker out of you.
I'm pretty sure we've had this debate in this thread before, plus in the Char Op forum, and the general consensus was that properties that say "this weapon" apply even when "this weapon" is being used as an implement.
I honestly can't imagine specializing in a specific element or school of magic for any class. While there's often a power choice at each level, too often the power just blows, because of like the 10 powers you get to choose from at each level, oftentimes 2 are clearly superior and 5 are just clearly shit. While DMs can allow reflavouring, at the same time, some "flavours" are clearly superior (radiant, cold, illusion) while others are clearly shit (necrotic). Plus often the quality of these flavours are highly dependent on certain feats or features, which present a significant opportunity cost when you use powers without that flavour. (I.e., if only half your powers are fire, then all the pyromancy/fire-damage feats you took are only in effect half the time, so either they're not worth it or your fire powers become way better than your non-fire powers.)
In this respect, I like what they've done with Essentials in trying to establish multiple "specializations" and in particular with Mages having 2 specializations "for free", instead of costing them separately as feats. I just don't think it's been thorough enough. I would hope for, if I were an optimistic person:
1) A re-examination of all extant powers to boost all the shitty choices to decent levels, so that players have the freedom to choose from available powers based on flavour rather than impact (if they so desire)
2) A generalizing of (some) type/element/school-specific feats/items/powers/features so that they provide benefits for all flavours at once. (I.e. so if you want to be a fire/cold mage, you don't have to take a fire-empowering feat and a cold-empowering feat separately, but maybe just one general "elemental boost" feat that gives different effects to different elements.)
Like, playing a radiant Invoker is an interesting and valid choice, but it'd be nice if you could take non-radiant powers without being "punished" for it, either by losing the effects of all the radiant-specific shit you took or by having to invest in more feats and such to boost the impact of those powers. Of course, for a radiant Invoker to complain about the diminished impact of any non-radiant powers (s)he takes is somewhat ludicrous, but the fact that radiant Invokers stand out as OP compared to non-radiant Invokers is, in itself, I think somewhat a problem...
As in, you can take 1 "general" feat that boosts all your powers by 5% or you can take a "radiant" feat that boosts your radiant powers by 20%. Once you take the "radiant" feat, then taking any non-radiant powers seems silly. Once you take a "radiant" power, you start wondering about taking that "radiant" feat. If only that "radiant" feat boosted other powers also by 20% or if that "general" feat had a bigger impact, you wouldn't feel as locked into all radiant, all the time, or all general, all the time.
I see that they've made that change to Flaming Weapon in the Compendium, but not Frost or Radiant or Lightning etc, ... (and there's an angry Enworld thread about it...)
Why? I have no idea. Maybe this was a flavor-motivated decision.
EDIT: This is especially weird considering that Radiant and especially Frost are much larger offenders as far as warping power levels than Flaming ever was. I wonder if maybe this was a speculative change that they decided not to push and some guy forgot to remove it from the Flaming entry before the Compendium was updated.
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Even accounting for hitting two targets with my attacks (which is often difficult, as Aegeri's enemies seem unusually aware about keeping spread out, and he's also thrown in monsters that can interrupt bursts/blasts by shifting out of them) my damage is still substantially less than the others.
I considered switching to Sorcerer, but I played one in the last game with this group, and it looks like Sorcerers have even worse Fire spells in general, not to mention the lack of Fire-themed PPs.
It would be difficult to justify a MC feat to make Initiate a better Leader, too. The options would be Bard, Ardent, or Shaman, but I don't have the stats in Wisdom or Charisma to make any multiclass powers useful. I have the same problem with hybrids: the only Int-primary Leader is Artificer, which is a) pretty much anti-Dark Sun and b) the other class I'm currently playing.
As to the question of which roles I'd like to play, well, I was originally going for an even split of Striker and Controller. As the game has gone on, it's become clear to me that the group needs a bit more than a single Leader to function (though now that I think about it, if I were more effective at either of my roles then it might not be as necessary). I don't especially want to be a Leader, but it fits the character's theme and the party would definitely benefit from it.
Concerning a mechanical rewrite, I don't think Aegeri would mind, so long as it doesn't require anything from the Divine power source.
Any advice for how to deal with people who play like Bob yet also suck at the mechanical part of the game?
The only people I can find who will play regularly are like this
Have you taken a look at Orbmaster's Incendiary Detonation from Arcane Power? Ridiculous lvl 1 encounter power that knocks prone in an aoe and continues to deal fire dmg over time.
Burning hands lvl 1 encounter? Absurd AOE that does a fair bit of dmg (1/2 on a miss) so it's guaranteed to clear every chump in the room, shift or no.
Flaming sphere does great damage and continues to do it every single turn for the rest of the encounter, chasing after enemies, doing unavoidable AOE, everything while you're still free to cast other shit (from the way I understand it).
Fountain of flame 3d8+int AOE + another 5 when their turn comes. lvl1. And mind you all these things can be enlarged. Enlarged fireball covers 81 squares in 4d6+int dmg.
Maybe things just look good from the outside.
All those powers hit allies. It sounds great but in practice you very rarely get to use one of them without hitting allies.
Burning Hands for me does about 10-15 damage, which isn't bad, but I tend to have to hit allies with it as well.
Flaming Sphere is good, but I've found it to be somewhat situational. Initiate tends to require his move action to get into position himself, either away from whatever's clobbering him in melee or towards a group to maximize Fireshroud or Burning Hands. That means it'll tend to sit idly and do absolutely nothing but drain Initiate's minor action to sustain.
Fireball just plain sucks. I tried it, it just sucks.