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3 years ago ::
Feb 11, 2010 - 2:18PM
#151
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Date Joined:
Jun 10, 2009
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How is twin strike that under powered?
I assume you mean overpowered, and thats a pretty easy answer: because it is inarguably better than every Ranger at will, better than any other striker at will, and probably better than any other at-will in the game except for ones that are also obviously broken, like Winged Horde. A Ranger with twin strike has essentially no need for other powers, he can use the same attack every single round and be devastatingly effective.
Any power that is so good it is clearly the best option, and that obviates the need for strategy or character variety, is broken.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 11, 2010 - 2:21PM
#152
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Date Joined:
Sep 10, 2004
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I don't know if i'd go that far... the ranger in my group always does less damage than the barbarian, but that's mostly dice rolls
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3 years ago ::
Feb 11, 2010 - 2:33PM
#153
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Date Joined:
Aug 29, 2008
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Many, many classes are built around a go-to at-will and a situational at-will. Both Hit & Run, shield of blades, and Nimble strike are all good options to have when you need them. Careful Strike is pretty great these days as well, especially if you're a fullblade wielding Beastmaster.
Second...with the trimdown of stacking static mods, Twin Strike is well under control. A few more need to go (not weapon enhancement and weapon focus, those are fine) like Pit Fighter/Kensai and Iron Armbands, but that's about it.
And any ranger who never uses anything but Twin Strike needs to learn to play his class.
Somebody has to be the highest damage. Since the Ranger really doesn't have anything else, we might as well let him have this.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 11, 2010 - 9:35PM
#154
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Date Joined:
Feb 26, 2007
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So what if it didn't happen in one book? Stuff like it happens in plenty of other books.
Then cite those books. The LOTR movies while fantastic in their own right are not canonical.
Greek Mythology has some 'clutzy' heroes.
Conan books have some 'cinematics' to it that is related to fumbles
If you expand the concept of fumbles into skill checks, the even more books and mythologies open up.
I use crits/fumbles with skill checks. I leave it up to the players if they want to add their own consequence when they roll a 1 in combat, they do and I do the same with the creatures/npcs.
My players know if they pick the die up to roll for a skill check instead of roleplaying it, they have the chance to fumble, they cannot fumble if they roleplay it, if it is a check that can be roleplayed out.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 11, 2010 - 9:57PM
#155
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IMO, players should be able to choose whether to roleplay exceptional clumsiness if/when they want to. It ruins some peoples' image of their character to be forced into being clumsy. If a player misses and remarks "whoa I just totally hit the wall instead of that orc" then more power to him for being cinematic and stuff, but if someone wants to play a more centered, controlled character, then fubbing 1/20 of attacks would be a real unnecessary ... hurdle... words fail me. I think I crit fumbled my argument; must be the rum+lacroix.
Anyway, I think the pro-fumble arguments are fairly thin. If it's 1) not part of RAW, and 2) not something that a substantial majority of the players (DM included) want to do, then don't do it.
Unless you're in that weird once-in-a-blue-moon situation where nobody wants to DM, but you are willing to DM as long as you can do it your crazy way. That doesn't happen too much with 4e because DMing is simpler now, but if it is, you know, by all means, use whatever messed-up rules you want and encourage one of those players to say "hey look I'm just going to DM now, you can roll up a character." (Also probably the only situation where an all-out regular DMPC is a good idea!)
The world is a mess, I just need to... rule it.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 12, 2010 - 5:04AM
#156
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The biggest downside of fumbles is that it favors the monsters. Monsters have a short airtime and they are going to die anyway. A DM is going to roll much less dice for that particular monster then a player will for their PCs. The same is true for criticals, but less important since in 4E PCs deal a LOT more damage on a critical then virtually all monsters do so on a critical. In 3E this was not the case when facing weapon using opponents, and my players tended to dislike critical hits almost as much as critical fumbles. The discussion about critical fumbles in literature is a bit odd. There always have been heroes that constantly fumble and fail and still manage to win. I just read some of the original fairy tales by Grimm and there several of those kind of heroes. In fact, it is noted by the translator that the majorities of heroes in these fairy tales belong to that group because that gives the listener the idea that they could be that hero. In all those stories though the hero has very little active control over the end result. There are even stories where the hero ignores all good advice, is still helped and stilll manages to marry the princess and become the king by the end of the tale. Feels a bit like a railroad campaign to me  Regardless, why would the fumbles be anything more then an explanation for missing? When I describe it to a player that the natural 1 means he slipped on blood or his weapon was still stuck in a corpse or a tree, it does not mean there has to be any special effect. It still is a fumble. I feel there is no need to make it any worse then that.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 12, 2010 - 7:36AM
#157
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Date Joined:
Jun 10, 2009
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Somebody has to be the highest damage. Since the Ranger really doesn't have anything else, we might as well let him have this.
This is untrue. For one thing, Rangers are terrific skill monkeys, and make even better scouts than rogues, so the idea that they are great at damage but suck at all else just isn't true.
But for another, Bow Rangers at least have the highest range, by far, in the entire game, which gives them tremendous survivability. Melee Rangers I have much less of a problem with--they're glass cannons forced to put themselves in danger to be effective, which ends up actually requiring a lot of teamwork and strategy to keep them alive while they do their thing. But Bow Rangers? An elven bow ranger who stands out of enemy range and who has a little room to manuever can easily go an entire fight without taking any damage. An elven bow ranger on an open plane is literally unkillable in the vast majority of encounters.
The other thing I despise about twin strike is that Rangers have a ton of really nifty, flavorful powers which tend to get ignored because they conflict with, or fail to synergize with, twin strike. There are some really cool beast powers for example, but every beast ranger I've seen just uses their beast for flanking purposes while they twin strike away.
This is the same reason I'm not a fan of storm sorcerers. Dragon Sorcs have so many close burst and blast powers that they spend a lot of time in melee range, so despite their huge dpr they are definite glass cannon. Chaos sorcs have better range, but they have an incredibly flavorful power set that makes combat much more interesting and unpredictable, and makes them much less likely to focus on repeating the same powers over and over again. But Storm Sorcs? They combine the predictability of Dragon sorcs with the range of Chaos Sorcs, and every one I've seen has just tricked the hell out of one at-will using arcane admixture and tons of cheese, grabbed two staffs of ruin, then stood at the edge of combat spamming the same boring powers over and over again.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 12, 2010 - 7:49AM
#158
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Awesomeocalypse (btw nice name), you can't duel wield staff's just fyi.
I did want to say, as a DM I have used critical fumbles in the past, saddly to the unfortunate death of one of my players. It was his first day back at the table with a PC I told him he shouldn't play, cause his HPs where way to low. But he didn't care.
So first encounter ranger rolls low with a ranged bow attack. Rolled a 1, I had them reroll to see if it was just a miss or critical failure. Well second roll failed. So low and behold I rolled to see what happened. I assigned every PC in the path of destruction including the shooter and rolled. saddly the PC caught an arrow while already in the negatives, and damage took him out.
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3 years ago ::
Feb 12, 2010 - 7:52AM
#159
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Date Joined:
Aug 28, 2005
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Awesomeocalypse (btw nice name), you can't duel wield staff's just fyi.
Actually, you can. Nothing stops you from doing so. You won't be able to use either of them as weapons if you do this, of course, but you can still definitely use both of them as implements, because there's no such thing as a two-handed implement.
EDIT: Also, Saruman. =)
Why, yes, as a matter of fact I am the Unfailing Arbiter of All That Is Good Design (Even More So Than The Actual Developers) TMSpeaking of things that were badly designed, please check out this thread for my Minotaur fix. What have the critics said, you ask? "If any of my players ask to play a Minotaur, I'm definitely offering this as an alternative to the official version." - EmpactWB "If I ever feel like playing a Minotaur I'll know where to look!" - Undrave "WoTC if you are reading this - please take this guy's advice." - Ferol_Debtor_of_Torm "Really full of win. A minotaur that is actually attractive for more than just melee classes." - Cpt_Micha Also, check out my recent GENASI variant! If you've ever wished that your Fire Genasi could actually set stuff on fire, your Water Genasi could actually swim, or your Wind Genasi could at least glide, then look no further. Finally, check out my OPTIONS FOR EVERYONE article, an effort to give unique support to the races that WotC keeps forgetting about. Includes new racial feature options for the Changeling, Deva, Githzerai, Gnoll, Gnome, Goliath, Half-Orc, Kalashtar, Minotaur, Shadar-Kai, Thri-Kreen, Warforged and more!
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3 years ago ::
Feb 12, 2010 - 1:37PM
#160
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from what I've read, you can not apply the duel wielding feat to Staffs, now if you can I would like to see something backing this up, so I can link it to my previous DM to let him know.
As for the Saruman comment, that was my statement to the DM as well, and he said it was somewhere in the Eberron book I believe that staffs where considered 2-handed implements or some crap like that. There was no actual errata or anything but it was in there.
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