I found the assassin-esque paragon path for the avenger interesting (forget the name of it). Usually assassins and honorable religious warrior dudes are mutually exclusive in these settings, but DnD went ahead and put them together and it wound up being delicious.
I think it's hard for someone not to rage at mario kart, while shouting "Fuck you Donkey Kong. Whose dick did you suck to get all those red shells?"
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Mike Danger"Diane..."a place both wonderful and strangeRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
I just realized that I need to use the abbey on the nentir vale map as a secret avenger training ground that gets besieged
The huge bugbear chieftain walks in and backhands the old abbot headfirst into the altar...the old guy's sitting there with blood pouring out of his smashed nose.
I found the assassin-esque paragon path for the avenger interesting (forget the name of it). Usually assassins and honorable religious warrior dudes are mutually exclusive in these settings, but DnD went ahead and put them together and it wound up being delicious.
In my case, I had a hard time understanding the flavor of the Avenger until I started thinking of them as akin to the historical (well, quasi-historical) Assassins - instead of the modern connotation of assassin as a sneaky killer who never gets caught, imagining them as dogged, divinely-inspired fanatics.
Did anyone notice the feat that gives cold vulnerability when you use a fire attack.
That gave me a bit of a WTF.
C-c-c-combos! I think it's great. I'd like to see a few more feats like it.
My guess its to counter the bonuses for only picking (for example) fire spells (for astral fire) and allow people to experiment whilst maintaining efficiency
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited April 2009
Incidentally, Dual Wands used to be a pretty viable setup via Eberron stuff.
My Artificer used to do horrible things on a regular basis with a pair of Wands of Scorching Ray.
The timing right after the Witchalok preview is pretty funny however.
Arcane Reserves sounds muchos strong. (+2 dmg with at-wills when no encounter powers left, human, arcane)
Reckless Curse sounds great too. I love hitting things and hate missing them with my Warlock. (+1 to attack against cursed creats)
one of the very amusing things about 4e that i like is that humans seem to consistently have some of the best racial feats
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
edited April 2009
Humans are still a bit weaker than any other races, all things considered. Extra at-will is nice but usually not quite as good as a racial encounter power, and losing out on 2 to a stat is pretty strong in a system where magic items no longer give stat boosts.
EDIT: that is, prior to their awesome racial feats, that help bring them and Half-Elves up in line with the other races a bit better.
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
one of the very amusing things about 4e that i like is that humans seem to consistently have some of the best racial feats
The human feats are good enough that I really, really, really have to think twice before picking another race. Action Surge has made the difference more times than I can count.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
one of the very amusing things about 4e that i like is that humans seem to consistently have some of the best racial feats
The human feats are good enough that I really, really, really have to think twice before picking another race. Action Surge has made the difference more times than I can count.
I just like the fact you see a lot more racial diversity in general. I do see a fair number of humans, but that makes sense really and in the end, if they party isn't all mono-Elves anymore I'm all for it.
Hey guys. Would you say it's even feasible to build a ranged-oriented rogue? Rogues are sweet and all, but I'm tired of all rogues being ninjas, jumping around all willy-nilly. I want to be the guy in the darkness picking people off with crossbow bolts through the skull.
I wanna make a fancy guy who wears glasses, smokes a pipe, wears dress clothes, and enjoys a rich clean lifestyle. No need to get your hands dirty. Though of course the real money is in shady business and business often goes wrong. And often you need to make a few people disappear to make a point.
You know, a real mafioso type. A hitman. Like the Sorter scene from Revolver, but still sufficiently fantasy. Cool. Calculated. All business when needed.
Why not make a ranger, you say? His flavor is completely wrong. Maybe if I renamed every power and ability it could be flavorful, but not in the current state. I don't want my guy to be a tree-hugging hippy. Nothing to do with nature. Why would a professional killer like that be hanging around with a group of sword-wielding maniacs killing kobolds? Well, I'm still thinking about that haha.
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Hey guys. Would you say it's even feasible to build a ranged-oriented rogue?
Yes. Distant Advantage has opened up a lot of options for this.
Hey guys. Would you say it's even feasible to build a ranged-oriented rogue? Rogues are sweet and all, but I'm tired of all rogues being ninjas, jumping around all willy-nilly. I want to be the guy in the darkness picking people off with crossbow bolts through the skull.
I wanna make a fancy guy who wears glasses, smokes a pipe, wears dress clothes, and enjoys a rich clean lifestyle. No need to get your hands dirty. Though of course the real money is in shady business and business often goes wrong. And often you need to make a few people disappear to make a point.
You know, a real mafioso type. A hitman. Like the Sorter scene from Revolver, but still sufficiently fantasy. Cool. Calculated. All business when needed.
Why not make a ranger, you say? His flavor is completely wrong. Maybe if I renamed every power and ability it could be flavorful, but not in the current state. I don't want my guy to be a tree-hugging hippy. Nothing to do with nature. Why would a professional killer like that be hanging around with a group of sword-wielding maniacs killing kobolds? Well, I'm still thinking about that haha.
It's completely feasible. Quite possibly also awesome. Just don't do what I did, which is try and emulate solid snake and run around with a hand crossbow and a dagger. You will quickly find that given the option, the dagger is going to win most of the time. I'd really recommend doing superior crossbow. Also, pick a race that bumps con and cha. you're going to want steady shooter at paragon and that takes a 15 con, so you'd be doing 18 in dex, 13 in cha, 13 in con base, which gets bumped to 18 dex, 15 cha, 15 con. Which basically means half-elf and hobgoblin, goblin if your dm will let you use a small superior crossbow that does 1d8 and just glosses over the whole small creatures can't use 2-handed weapons thing.
I played a ranged Rogue for a bit, and it's perfectly viable. Especially with Martial Power, lots of great new ranged powers in there for Rogues. And Distant Advantage in PHB2 is a must now. Barring that, you can always get skill focus Stealth, and Fleeting Ghost: run into cover - stealth check - Deft Strike. Instant ranged CA.
It's completely feasible. Quite possibly also awesome. Just don't do what I did, which is try and emulate solid snake and run around with a hand crossbow and a dagger. You will quickly find that given the option, the dagger is going to win most of the time. I'd really recommend doing superior crossbow. Also, pick a race that bumps con and cha. you're going to want steady shooter at paragon and that takes a 15 con, so you'd be doing 18 in dex, 13 in cha, 13 in con base, which gets bumped to 18 dex, 15 cha, 15 con. Which basically means half-elf and hobgoblin, goblin if your dm will let you use a small superior crossbow that does 1d8 and just glosses over the whole small creatures can't use 2-handed weapons thing.
Drow works extremely well, especially at low levels. The cloud of darkness power lets you have a few rounds of combat advantage pretty easily without having to duck around corners. If you start with a 13 con, and are willing to delay steady shooter to epic, you don't even have to bump your constitution, too.
Yeah. Drow Brutal Scoundrel is pretty much the premier ranged Rogue build, not only for so many ways to generate CA, but because Cloud of Darkness synergizes so well with Hide in Plain Sight and Steady Shooter it's ridiculous. (And it's hard to beat the flavor of the hand crossbow, which Drow can bump to d8 high crit, though a superior crossbow is still, well, superior.) They are great at low levels, as Litejedi said, and seriously only get better as they advance.
Distant Advantage helps bridge the gap for other races, but still keeps your targets limited to what your allies are actually flanking (or can even flank at all).
I'm after some DMing advice re: Keep on the Shadowfell, but also more generally applicable:
All has gone well so far and the group are ready to enter the Keep. However I notice when they descend those stairs, there's nothing at all to stop them from blundering in the correct direction, heading straight to level 2 and then on to the Big Bad in only three or four encounters. The way I see it options are:
(a) Meta-game unsubtle hinting that these stairs down look particularly dark and menacing.
(b) A magically sealed door and some kind of key maguffin they handily find in their last encounter on level 1.
(c) Redrawing the map on the fly as they explore so they always find the stairs down last no matter what direction they pick.
(d) Just don't worry about it and let them potentially blunder to their under-levelled doom.
I'm currently thinking (b) with a bit of embellishment. There's an encounter designed for when the PCs first return to town in which they receive a fake password for level 2's entrance guards. I may turn that into the password for the magically sealed door to level 2. Still fake of course and have it drop them through a pit straight into the guard encounter if they try to use it.
I'd go with b), because it means the least work and also it's pretty much infallible.
Edit: Not having read anything on the encounter, I don't really know how it would work, but couldn't you have a monster drop the key to the next level, and just have it be the last monster/group they kill?
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AegeriTiny wee bacteriumsPlateau of LengRegistered Userregular
edited April 2009
Arasaki, you should remember how I solved that problem with the Shadowfell Keep (As that is the same map I'm using in my campaign). It's pretty open and easy for the PCs to end up well out of their depth encounter wise if they aren't careful.
Yeah it was Mike Mearls Horseshoe. He is aware of the problems with the double sword, but I'm betting they don't have a neat and simple mechanical solution to it yet. It's probably why it hasn't been fixed just at the moment.
I thought it might've been Mearls.
Yeah, there isn't a way to solve it that doesn't make it too complicated. And to be honest I don't think it "needs" fixing. It's a situational sort of weapon and doesn't strike me as horribly out of whack. Hell, i think the only thing that would get me excited about it is if I was playing a tempest fighter.
Arasaki, you should remember how I solved that problem with the Shadowfell Keep (As that is the same map I'm using in my campaign). It's pretty open and easy for the PCs to end up well out of their depth encounter wise if they aren't careful.
I tend to drink on Saturday nights, so it gets blurry. I just remember following people around and hitting things a lot.
Yeah it was Mike Mearls Horseshoe. He is aware of the problems with the double sword, but I'm betting they don't have a neat and simple mechanical solution to it yet. It's probably why it hasn't been fixed just at the moment.
I thought it might've been Mearls.
Yeah, there isn't a way to solve it that doesn't make it too complicated. And to be honest I don't think it "needs" fixing. It's a situational sort of weapon and doesn't strike me as horribly out of whack. Hell, i think the only thing that would get me excited about it is if I was playing a tempest fighter.
I really prefer going two-blade warrior and picking up waraxes or bastard swords, for a little extra damage. Plus, doublesword is kind of cheesy, and I don't like the imagery of someone trying to attack with both ends at the same time. It'd look weird.
Most people will tend to be cautious in a dungeon - if they find stairs down and have not explored the rest of the current level they will go back an explore, then come back to the stairs - don't leave monsters at your back.
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The huge bugbear chieftain walks in and backhands the old abbot headfirst into the altar...the old guy's sitting there with blood pouring out of his smashed nose.
Bugbear: "What do you have to say for yourself?"
It's fucking awesome.
In my case, I had a hard time understanding the flavor of the Avenger until I started thinking of them as akin to the historical (well, quasi-historical) Assassins - instead of the modern connotation of assassin as a sneaky killer who never gets caught, imagining them as dogged, divinely-inspired fanatics.
edit: lol@Mike
Inquisitor77: Rius, you are Sisyphus and melee Wizard is your boulder
Tube: This must be what it felt like to be an Iraqi when Saddam was killed
Bookish Stickers - Mrs. Rius' Etsy shop with bumper stickers and vinyl decals.
So apparently they're adding a new Pact for warlocks as well. Wonder what it is.
TSI|Awesome and I have been talking about for a while.
I have to wonder if they did get that idea from Gabe :P
It encourages you to be thematic about your spells rather than just being a guy who throws around arcane energy/fire/ice/acid/etc indiscriminately.
I wonder how that would work for Sorcerer spells with a random damage type, though.
That gave me a bit of a WTF.
First witchalocks, now this... Grimm shadow beckons
C-c-c-combos! I think it's great. I'd like to see a few more feats like it.
My guess its to counter the bonuses for only picking (for example) fire spells (for astral fire) and allow people to experiment whilst maintaining efficiency
My Artificer used to do horrible things on a regular basis with a pair of Wands of Scorching Ray.
The timing right after the Witchalok preview is pretty funny however.
With these, you can take it to the limit.
Reckless Curse sounds great too. I love hitting things and hate missing them with my Warlock. (+1 to attack against cursed creats)
EDIT: that is, prior to their awesome racial feats, that help bring them and Half-Elves up in line with the other races a bit better.
The human feats are good enough that I really, really, really have to think twice before picking another race. Action Surge has made the difference more times than I can count.
I just like the fact you see a lot more racial diversity in general. I do see a fair number of humans, but that makes sense really and in the end, if they party isn't all mono-Elves anymore I'm all for it.
I wanna make a fancy guy who wears glasses, smokes a pipe, wears dress clothes, and enjoys a rich clean lifestyle. No need to get your hands dirty. Though of course the real money is in shady business and business often goes wrong. And often you need to make a few people disappear to make a point.
You know, a real mafioso type. A hitman. Like the Sorter scene from Revolver, but still sufficiently fantasy. Cool. Calculated. All business when needed.
Why not make a ranger, you say? His flavor is completely wrong. Maybe if I renamed every power and ability it could be flavorful, but not in the current state. I don't want my guy to be a tree-hugging hippy. Nothing to do with nature. Why would a professional killer like that be hanging around with a group of sword-wielding maniacs killing kobolds? Well, I'm still thinking about that haha.
Yes. Distant Advantage has opened up a lot of options for this.
It's completely feasible. Quite possibly also awesome. Just don't do what I did, which is try and emulate solid snake and run around with a hand crossbow and a dagger. You will quickly find that given the option, the dagger is going to win most of the time. I'd really recommend doing superior crossbow. Also, pick a race that bumps con and cha. you're going to want steady shooter at paragon and that takes a 15 con, so you'd be doing 18 in dex, 13 in cha, 13 in con base, which gets bumped to 18 dex, 15 cha, 15 con. Which basically means half-elf and hobgoblin, goblin if your dm will let you use a small superior crossbow that does 1d8 and just glosses over the whole small creatures can't use 2-handed weapons thing.
LoL: failboattootoot
http://lexiconmegatherium.tumblr.com/
As for Wizard mainclass though... if I wasn't leaning toward Deva before, I am now.
Deva Wizard can have four dailies and three utilities from each level. It's crazy.
EDIT: Come to think of it, isn't there a feat to swap out your encounter powers after resting as well? I don't have my books with me at the moment.
Drow works extremely well, especially at low levels. The cloud of darkness power lets you have a few rounds of combat advantage pretty easily without having to duck around corners. If you start with a 13 con, and are willing to delay steady shooter to epic, you don't even have to bump your constitution, too.
Distant Advantage helps bridge the gap for other races, but still keeps your targets limited to what your allies are actually flanking (or can even flank at all).
9 hours until I can see the preview
Reserve Maneuver (sp?) is the feat that lets you switch encounter powers I believe. I'm pretty sure it's Paragon.
They did a preview giving out most of the details a few weeks back
(a) Meta-game unsubtle hinting that these stairs down look particularly dark and menacing.
(b) A magically sealed door and some kind of key maguffin they handily find in their last encounter on level 1.
(c) Redrawing the map on the fly as they explore so they always find the stairs down last no matter what direction they pick.
(d) Just don't worry about it and let them potentially blunder to their under-levelled doom.
I'm currently thinking (b) with a bit of embellishment. There's an encounter designed for when the PCs first return to town in which they receive a fake password for level 2's entrance guards. I may turn that into the password for the magically sealed door to level 2. Still fake of course and have it drop them through a pit straight into the guard encounter if they try to use it.
Thoughts?
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Edit: Not having read anything on the encounter, I don't really know how it would work, but couldn't you have a monster drop the key to the next level, and just have it be the last monster/group they kill?
I thought it might've been Mearls.
Yeah, there isn't a way to solve it that doesn't make it too complicated. And to be honest I don't think it "needs" fixing. It's a situational sort of weapon and doesn't strike me as horribly out of whack. Hell, i think the only thing that would get me excited about it is if I was playing a tempest fighter.
I tend to drink on Saturday nights, so it gets blurry. I just remember following people around and hitting things a lot.
I really prefer going two-blade warrior and picking up waraxes or bastard swords, for a little extra damage. Plus, doublesword is kind of cheesy, and I don't like the imagery of someone trying to attack with both ends at the same time. It'd look weird.
Welcome to my life. The only place I can really check this stuff out is here at work.