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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 12:19PM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jul 30, 2012
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This was not a breaker for me, but I remember the first time 4e monster stats threw our party for a loop. Our party...cleric, warden, sorceror, paladin, avenger, and barbarian...decided to trick our way past hobgoblin gate guards. Now yes, insight was their appropriate defense, but the dm casually remarked on their 19 intelligence!
We were like...GATE GUARDS?!? These guys should be lawyers, engineers and cpa's!!!
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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 1:48PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Mar 12, 2011
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The thing is that there's no real correlation between what armor/weapons players are wearing and their defenses or damage either. With the exception of classes designed to use heavy armor and shields, every class has the option to use either their primary or secondary stat for AC, and every striker class gains bonus dice or stat mods from class features or feats beyond what their weapon would provide.
A goblin is in cloth armor. Awesome. Does it have unarmored agility? Does it have a special feature that gives it a shield bonus or untyped AC bonus? It wields a dagger. Awesome. Does it add its dex mod on top of its strength mod for damage? An additional d6 with combat advantage? Mark on a hit?
Giving monsters the same complexity of options available to PCs would be needlessly complicated. Forcing monster math to follow the same base assumptions that almost every PC class has a way to break, without allowing them to break them, would skew the math greatly in favor of the PCs.
As mentioned, the right course of action if this bothers you is to just describe things differently. The orc soldier with no armor listed and a longsword that deals 1d12+10 damage? Feel free to tell the party that he's in full plate and wielding an executioner's axe. The math is done intentionally the way it's done both because it's less tedious and because it works. The math is likewise intentionally de-coupled with the flavor so that you can describe anything however you want to/see fit.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 3:53PM
#13
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Date Joined:
Feb 15, 2004
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Thanks for all the input. I'm still new-ish at running 4E, I've DMed a couple Encounters seasons and have DMed my home game from level 1 to now level 4/5 and I DMed 3/3.5 for over 10 years, so it's a hard habit to break! But I think I'll just reskin as needed, and if something does more damage than "normal", maybe I'll just describe it as a special maneuver or a very skilled strike or something along those lines.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 3:55PM
#14
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Date Joined:
Feb 15, 2004
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The thing is that there's no real correlation between what armor/weapons players are wearing and their defenses or damage either. With the exception of classes designed to use heavy armor and shields, every class has the option to use either their primary or secondary stat for AC, and every striker class gains bonus dice or stat mods from class features or feats beyond what their weapon would provide.
I think that at higher levels, you are probably right because the "half of your level" deal, but at low levels, the right (or wrong) armor can make all the difference in the world!
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10 months ago ::
Aug 03, 2012 - 10:40PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Mar 12, 2011
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The thing is that there's no real correlation between what armor/weapons players are wearing and their defenses or damage either. With the exception of classes designed to use heavy armor and shields, every class has the option to use either their primary or secondary stat for AC, and every striker class gains bonus dice or stat mods from class features or feats beyond what their weapon would provide.
I think that at higher levels, you are probably right because the "half of your level" deal, but at low levels, the right (or wrong) armor can make all the difference in the world!
Yes, but what I meant was that the "right" armor varies wildly by class, and multiple classes can obtain plate-like AC while wearing cloth. Almost all light-armor classes can obtain extremely competitive-with-plate AC, and most of the light-armor classes that don't want an INT or DEX mod have class feature options that can give them CON or WIS to AC instead.
It's less common by far for someone to be wearing the wrong armor than for someone to neglect the stat modifier or feats supporting their armor. All barbarians are going to wear hide. Not all are going to go DEX secondary instead of CON, WIS, or CHA. Not all Avengers will take Unarmored Agility and consider their INT or DEX a dual-primary. The AC difference between two members of the same class, wearing the same armor, can be 3-6 points - and that's at level one. Since the 1/2 level mod is universal, the disparity between people paying attention to their AC and those neglecting it doesn't get any higher really, so long as both players put the same number of stat bumps into their AC stat.
TL/DR: Your class features, stats, and feats have a whole lot more to do with your AC in 4e than whether you're wearing Cloth, Leather, Hide, Chain, Scale, or Plate, because they've all been normalized to expected values. Users in any armor-type can optimize for higher-than-expected AC, or make silly choices and wind up with lower-than-expected AC, regardless of what they're wearing.
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10 months ago ::
Aug 04, 2012 - 5:33PM
#16
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Thanks for all the input. I'm still new-ish at running 4E, I've DMed a couple Encounters seasons and have DMed my home game from level 1 to now level 4/5 and I DMed 3/3.5 for over 10 years, so it's a hard habit to break! But I think I'll just reskin as needed, and if something does more damage than "normal", maybe I'll just describe it as a special maneuver or a very skilled strike or something along those lines.
Yes, shaking the 3.5 bug can be hard. You will always catch yourself referring back to 3.5 rules repeatedly. And yes, in 4e most things are maneuvers. Seriously if you thing about it what real fighter would use simply a slashing movement with his sword and call that an attack, and then do it every time? None.
“The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear.” - H. P. Lovecraft Games I Play: - D&D 4e - D&D 3.5 - AD&D 2e - Pathfinder - Call of Cthulhu
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