Interrupts are a really nifty concept. But frankly, they can create issues. For instance-Opportunity attacks interrupt actions. So, if you happen to be able to slide an enemy when making an opportunity attack, you can potentially make their attack invalid. And frankly, that's how it's supposed to work. But occasionally, it becomes a little too easy to invalidate attacks entirely.
Imagine a Knight that multiclassed monk and now has an Abduction Ki Focus. Suddenly, his Knight's Defender Aura can slide enemies if they attempt to shift, or if they attempt to attack anyone else. This can invalidate entire movements. And this is an unbelievably simple combination-requiring exactly one item, and one feat.
Relocating enemies on the battlefield is not a problem in and of itself. Having attacks resolve before the effects that trigger them is not a problem in and of itself. But when an interrupting attack suddenly comes with the promise of enemy relocation, you negate an entire attack. If this is an intended game mechanic, it really seems that the designers intended to sacrifice balance for the sake of "Doing something really awesome."
And make no mistake-it's really really awesome.
Saturday, April 30, 2011
Monday, April 25, 2011
Feats I have a problem with
Am I the only one who has a problem with Epic Fortitude, Epic Reflexes, and Epic Will? With Improved Defenses or-gawd-Superior Fortitude/Reflex/Will, it seems like these feats are a good way to get ridiculously high non-armor defenses. Add in that the main common items for Head/Waist/Feet are all +1/2/3 Fort/Ref/Will items, and it feels like there's a lot of math-fix type bonuses.
I almost think we need to reintroduce "Competence" as a bonus type. Circlet of Indomitability, for instance, could give a +1/2/3 Competence Bonus to Will. Epic Will could add a +4 competence bonus. Makes the feats give an incentive to avoid the most obvious +Defense items.
Speaking of, maybe change Staff of Ruin and the like from item bonuses to competence bonuses, and grant a feat? Of course, then you have the problem of any remaining item bonus to damage roll powers.
I almost think we need to reintroduce "Competence" as a bonus type. Circlet of Indomitability, for instance, could give a +1/2/3 Competence Bonus to Will. Epic Will could add a +4 competence bonus. Makes the feats give an incentive to avoid the most obvious +Defense items.
Speaking of, maybe change Staff of Ruin and the like from item bonuses to competence bonuses, and grant a feat? Of course, then you have the problem of any remaining item bonus to damage roll powers.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Bonuses: Too many is a lot, but too few is far too many
Third Edition had this fun thing where there was an incentive to build every foreseeable type of bonus possible onto every stat. Insight, Sacred, Holy (why you need Sacred AND holy is beyond me), Enhancement, and so on. The result was long strings of effects that stacked because there were just so many different types of bonuses that you could be using mere +1s and still end up with a net +8 bonus or whatever.
Forth edition got rid of that-mostly. Indeed, as we entered into the forth edition of the game, we found our bonuses pretty limited: Feat. Item. Power. Enhancement. And that was about it. Everything else was untyped.
But that's the rub. When everything is untyped, everything stacks. The entire point of removing the "Twenty seven types of bonuses" was self-defeating. Of course, most feats use feat bonuses-but a good many of them use untyped bonuses.
Ultimately, it's a question of what's mutually exclusive. I look at feats like Slashing Storm or the +Damage paragon path features and think "Well, that's not a problem on its own" but then you see builds stacking up bonus after bonus after bonus, and everything gets out of hand. The problem is that builds that don't take advantage of these sorts of bonuses end up coming in wildly behind. That's what happens when your best features aren't mutually exclusive-you want all of them.
So what's the solution? Feat bonuses with higher values, I would imagine. Untyped bonuses becoming power bonuses. Converting certain feats to at-will stance powers. Unfortunately, there's not an easy and simple This Fixes Everything answer.
Forth edition got rid of that-mostly. Indeed, as we entered into the forth edition of the game, we found our bonuses pretty limited: Feat. Item. Power. Enhancement. And that was about it. Everything else was untyped.
But that's the rub. When everything is untyped, everything stacks. The entire point of removing the "Twenty seven types of bonuses" was self-defeating. Of course, most feats use feat bonuses-but a good many of them use untyped bonuses.
Ultimately, it's a question of what's mutually exclusive. I look at feats like Slashing Storm or the +Damage paragon path features and think "Well, that's not a problem on its own" but then you see builds stacking up bonus after bonus after bonus, and everything gets out of hand. The problem is that builds that don't take advantage of these sorts of bonuses end up coming in wildly behind. That's what happens when your best features aren't mutually exclusive-you want all of them.
So what's the solution? Feat bonuses with higher values, I would imagine. Untyped bonuses becoming power bonuses. Converting certain feats to at-will stance powers. Unfortunately, there's not an easy and simple This Fixes Everything answer.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
All Bark and no Bite
It is time for a confession.
I actually do not much care for Dungeons and Dragons as a Dungeon Master. Much of this is likely due to the fact that I've been unable to play off-line games, and have been involved in inferior means of online play involving trading a bunch of IRC chat rooms and Maptools-needlessly complexity that makes the game slow to a grinding halt.
I enjoy encounter building. I do not enjoy encounter running. But it is disingenuous to build a blog on "How to build a proper encounter" without simultaneously having the ability to test the theory that's being proposed. I am unable to test my own theories. As thus, I cannot in good conscience continue this blog.
That being said, more than likely, I will anyway. I'll leave testing up to others though.
I actually do not much care for Dungeons and Dragons as a Dungeon Master. Much of this is likely due to the fact that I've been unable to play off-line games, and have been involved in inferior means of online play involving trading a bunch of IRC chat rooms and Maptools-needlessly complexity that makes the game slow to a grinding halt.
I enjoy encounter building. I do not enjoy encounter running. But it is disingenuous to build a blog on "How to build a proper encounter" without simultaneously having the ability to test the theory that's being proposed. I am unable to test my own theories. As thus, I cannot in good conscience continue this blog.
That being said, more than likely, I will anyway. I'll leave testing up to others though.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Apologies for a Brief Hiatus
My apologies for the recent total lack of updates. What do you mean "It's only been about a week?" I try and keep a very tight update schedule! This blog will not rest until every generalized failing of 4th Edition has been remedied.
Next post should be sometime next week.
Next post should be sometime next week.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Turn Shenanigans
An interesting trick was opened up to the Rogue with the introduction of Essentials. Because sneak attack was revised to once per turn, rather than once per round, a Rogue who had one of the dreaded minor action attack powers (I'll talk about those later) could use Sneak Attack on his turn, and then ready an action-probably waiting for an ally to attack (Since readying for an enemy's action means they can negate your Ready an Action by not triggering it). Because the Immediate Reaction occurs on another character's turn, you can benefit from Sneak Attack twice per round. Before accounting for Lazy Warlords (yeah, we'll talk about that later too).
I once presented the question "Is there a name for this tactic?" dubbing it Turn Shenanigans. Indeed there was.
"A bad idea." After all, for all the benefits of getting around 1/turn restrictions, when you open up the door to using Readying an Action in order to affect how "turn" effects relate, you can have monsters attacking PCs on their own turns; suddenly, the fighter can't use Combat Challenge because you can't use immediate actions on your own turn!
The conventional wisdom is to just have a gentleman's agreement against this kind of tactic but honestly, when has "Everyone agrees that it's broken so don't use it" been a proper excuse for broken gameplay in the first place?
Before isolating the "proposed solution," I would like to identify something that I do not inherently consider a problem that is along the same vein of thought: delaying one's turn until after that of an enemy who has a status effect that will then expire. For instance, the Wizard immobilizes the enemy until the end of the wizard's next turn. The enemy, who originally acted immediately before the Wizard, now acts after the wizard. Because the status effect is relevant to the Wizard's turn, not the target's, the target can delay in order to negate the effect as it pertains to his own turn. It's unclear if this would work with Daze, and Domination and Stun obviously prevent this tactic. Now, many of you are probably crying foul-
-but I don't see it that way. In order for this tactic to work, the monster necessarily has to be granting the Wizard an additional turn relative to the target's turn. If the wizard and the monster were the only two creatures in the encounter, delaying until after the Wizard is nearly identical to simply abandoning his turn!
On the other hand, delaying your turn when you are suffering from a Save Ends effect prevents you from making that saving throw until the actual end of your turn-but, likewise, it prevents you from having to make that saving throw. This means that if you're one step away from being petrified by a "Second Failed Save" effect, you can wait for your best buddies to apply some pluses to saving throws. Technically, the Delay rules don't state what happens if you lose your turn due to delaying too long as it pertains to saving throws. Conventional wisdom would suggest that at the start of your next turn, you basically resolve the end of your previous turn.
This Save Ends Turn Shenanigans is a significant gameplay decision, but I'm not convinced that it's broken in and of itself. Rather, it just suggests that perhaps Save Ends effects should be increased in danger when it pertains to failing saving throws, because characters do in fact have options to negate their failed saves. Of course, once a creature has been stunned, that's the end of it.
But let's get back to the basic problem of Turn Shenanigans-readying an action. The problem arises because it means that actions originally not intended to take place on anyone else turn end up occurring on their turn. Thus, the solution is simple: with the exception of "You cannot take an Immediate Action on your own" clause, for the duration of the readied action, it is considered the readier's turn, and not the turn of anyone else. Thus, you can utilize Immediate Actions if an enemy readies an action to attack you on your turn, but you may only use said Immediate Action in the course of the enemy's action. The same goes for Opportunity Attacks.
The reason this is the solution is that the purpose of Readying an Action is not to get around the fact that your own actions occur on your turn, but rather to take part of your turn at a later point in time; that is, the Immediate Action is merely a mechanism to accomplish this task. Though it is admittedly somewhat inelegant to put such an ad-hoc solution to the problem that flies in the face of the definition of a creature's "Turn" as being a single connected period of in-game time, it's also important to realize that rounds and turns are abstractions to begin with.
I once presented the question "Is there a name for this tactic?" dubbing it Turn Shenanigans. Indeed there was.
"A bad idea." After all, for all the benefits of getting around 1/turn restrictions, when you open up the door to using Readying an Action in order to affect how "turn" effects relate, you can have monsters attacking PCs on their own turns; suddenly, the fighter can't use Combat Challenge because you can't use immediate actions on your own turn!
The conventional wisdom is to just have a gentleman's agreement against this kind of tactic but honestly, when has "Everyone agrees that it's broken so don't use it" been a proper excuse for broken gameplay in the first place?
Before isolating the "proposed solution," I would like to identify something that I do not inherently consider a problem that is along the same vein of thought: delaying one's turn until after that of an enemy who has a status effect that will then expire. For instance, the Wizard immobilizes the enemy until the end of the wizard's next turn. The enemy, who originally acted immediately before the Wizard, now acts after the wizard. Because the status effect is relevant to the Wizard's turn, not the target's, the target can delay in order to negate the effect as it pertains to his own turn. It's unclear if this would work with Daze, and Domination and Stun obviously prevent this tactic. Now, many of you are probably crying foul-
-but I don't see it that way. In order for this tactic to work, the monster necessarily has to be granting the Wizard an additional turn relative to the target's turn. If the wizard and the monster were the only two creatures in the encounter, delaying until after the Wizard is nearly identical to simply abandoning his turn!
On the other hand, delaying your turn when you are suffering from a Save Ends effect prevents you from making that saving throw until the actual end of your turn-but, likewise, it prevents you from having to make that saving throw. This means that if you're one step away from being petrified by a "Second Failed Save" effect, you can wait for your best buddies to apply some pluses to saving throws. Technically, the Delay rules don't state what happens if you lose your turn due to delaying too long as it pertains to saving throws. Conventional wisdom would suggest that at the start of your next turn, you basically resolve the end of your previous turn.
This Save Ends Turn Shenanigans is a significant gameplay decision, but I'm not convinced that it's broken in and of itself. Rather, it just suggests that perhaps Save Ends effects should be increased in danger when it pertains to failing saving throws, because characters do in fact have options to negate their failed saves. Of course, once a creature has been stunned, that's the end of it.
But let's get back to the basic problem of Turn Shenanigans-readying an action. The problem arises because it means that actions originally not intended to take place on anyone else turn end up occurring on their turn. Thus, the solution is simple: with the exception of "You cannot take an Immediate Action on your own" clause, for the duration of the readied action, it is considered the readier's turn, and not the turn of anyone else. Thus, you can utilize Immediate Actions if an enemy readies an action to attack you on your turn, but you may only use said Immediate Action in the course of the enemy's action. The same goes for Opportunity Attacks.
The reason this is the solution is that the purpose of Readying an Action is not to get around the fact that your own actions occur on your turn, but rather to take part of your turn at a later point in time; that is, the Immediate Action is merely a mechanism to accomplish this task. Though it is admittedly somewhat inelegant to put such an ad-hoc solution to the problem that flies in the face of the definition of a creature's "Turn" as being a single connected period of in-game time, it's also important to realize that rounds and turns are abstractions to begin with.
Friday, April 8, 2011
Side Effects: Hybrid Swordmages
Those who pay close attention to the blog may notice that at one point, I was "rather dismissive" of Hybrid Swordmages. Hybrid Swordmages, as far as swordmages go, are nearly universally better than their non-hybrid breathern. Swordbond is by and large a relatively useless feature, Swordmage's Warding can be regained through Hybrid Talent, and unless you hybrid into a class without leather armor proficiency, you're not losing anything on AC (and even if you are, it's another feat). In short, except for being marginally feat starved, hybrid swordmages have one-and only one-downside:
Their defender feature is usable only "once per encounter." That sounds like madness! And if that were really the case, it would be. But rather, Aegis of <Whatever> Is usable once per encounter to mark, but usable at will to trigger, and can even mark multiple enemies at once.
An ordinary swordmage gains very little by repeating his usage of Aegis to mark enemies, because he unmarks previously marked enemies. Since Aegis lasts until the end of the encounter, this means that in a lot of cases, unless the "Face of the battlefield fundamentally changes," there's not a lot of difference in the mark feature of a hybrid swordmage compared to a non-hybrid.
The bottom line is that, it doesn't take anything to "Remain a defender" as a hybrid swordmage. This means that, unlike the Fighter, you can actively pursue your other class (usually a striker) while simultaneously being roughly as potent of a defender as a full class swordmage.
Prior to my Solo Monster rules, Hybrid Swordmages were particuarly effective against solo monsters-after all, they literally marked the entire encounter from the outset. With the universal ability of solo monsters to negate marks though, hybrid swordmages are hit with the harshest rules scenario since third edition-not quite akin to a wizard facing an Iron Golem, but running a bit close.
So what's the solution? Again, it's not just important to realize what the problem is, but to realize why it's a problem. The essential solution is to look fundamentally at how hybrids are "supposed" to function (assuming that they're even supposed to-I'll look at hybrids more generally later, but for now, let's just look at the concept). Striker features only apply to the class powers of said striker class. If you look at the Defender, instead of triggering whenever the defender attacks, it triggers when using Fighter attacks.
Seeing a pattern? The basic premise is that, in order for the Hybrid Swordmage to make sense, instead of arbitrarily limiting how often the Swordmage can mark in terms of encounter resources, we need to make the Swordmage play like a swordmage.
My fix is simple: Aegis is an at-will power. The immediate action related to Aegis is not. You can only use Aegis of Assault's Immediate Reaction, for instance, once per encounter. The trick, however, is that whenever you hit or miss using a Swordmage attack power, you regain the usage of your Aegis power. What's really nice about this build is that it stops hybrid Swordmage/Avenger (or I guess hybrid Swordmage/Paladin) that uses Power of Skill from being the only reasonable option for an Assault Swordmage-after all, now those Swordmage Encounter Attack powers that can be used in conjunction with Aegis of Assault actually recharge Aegis of Assault.
If enemies are triggering your aegis every round, you're going to have to be using Swordmage powers every round. This prevents "Archery Shielders" so to speak from standing back from 10 squares away and using Aegis of Shielding every round; there are no super long-range Swordmage attacks, because Aegis of Shielding wasn't intended to be used at super long range as a rule of thumb.
If you happen to have Rapid Aegis Reaction, you may find you can't use Aegis of Assault for both your bonus immediate, and your standard. But on the other hand, if you're a hybrid defender and you only have one option for Immediate Actions per round, you're probably not hyper optimized in the first place
Their defender feature is usable only "once per encounter." That sounds like madness! And if that were really the case, it would be. But rather, Aegis of <Whatever> Is usable once per encounter to mark, but usable at will to trigger, and can even mark multiple enemies at once.
An ordinary swordmage gains very little by repeating his usage of Aegis to mark enemies, because he unmarks previously marked enemies. Since Aegis lasts until the end of the encounter, this means that in a lot of cases, unless the "Face of the battlefield fundamentally changes," there's not a lot of difference in the mark feature of a hybrid swordmage compared to a non-hybrid.
The bottom line is that, it doesn't take anything to "Remain a defender" as a hybrid swordmage. This means that, unlike the Fighter, you can actively pursue your other class (usually a striker) while simultaneously being roughly as potent of a defender as a full class swordmage.
Prior to my Solo Monster rules, Hybrid Swordmages were particuarly effective against solo monsters-after all, they literally marked the entire encounter from the outset. With the universal ability of solo monsters to negate marks though, hybrid swordmages are hit with the harshest rules scenario since third edition-not quite akin to a wizard facing an Iron Golem, but running a bit close.
So what's the solution? Again, it's not just important to realize what the problem is, but to realize why it's a problem. The essential solution is to look fundamentally at how hybrids are "supposed" to function (assuming that they're even supposed to-I'll look at hybrids more generally later, but for now, let's just look at the concept). Striker features only apply to the class powers of said striker class. If you look at the Defender, instead of triggering whenever the defender attacks, it triggers when using Fighter attacks.
Seeing a pattern? The basic premise is that, in order for the Hybrid Swordmage to make sense, instead of arbitrarily limiting how often the Swordmage can mark in terms of encounter resources, we need to make the Swordmage play like a swordmage.
My fix is simple: Aegis is an at-will power. The immediate action related to Aegis is not. You can only use Aegis of Assault's Immediate Reaction, for instance, once per encounter. The trick, however, is that whenever you hit or miss using a Swordmage attack power, you regain the usage of your Aegis power. What's really nice about this build is that it stops hybrid Swordmage/Avenger (or I guess hybrid Swordmage/Paladin) that uses Power of Skill from being the only reasonable option for an Assault Swordmage-after all, now those Swordmage Encounter Attack powers that can be used in conjunction with Aegis of Assault actually recharge Aegis of Assault.
If enemies are triggering your aegis every round, you're going to have to be using Swordmage powers every round. This prevents "Archery Shielders" so to speak from standing back from 10 squares away and using Aegis of Shielding every round; there are no super long-range Swordmage attacks, because Aegis of Shielding wasn't intended to be used at super long range as a rule of thumb.
If you happen to have Rapid Aegis Reaction, you may find you can't use Aegis of Assault for both your bonus immediate, and your standard. But on the other hand, if you're a hybrid defender and you only have one option for Immediate Actions per round, you're probably not hyper optimized in the first place
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