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Ah, the fallacy of "roleplaying to stats".

a: Not having a decent attack stat is bad roleplaying. You character would choose his profession because that's what he's really good at. PCs are a "cut above" the other schmoe walking around.

b: Remember the stat breakdown from all the way back in OD&D. 9-11 is average human. Someone with a 15-16 intelligence is brilliant, strength a college ->professional athlete, etc. Anyone with a stat at least that high is going to be bright enough to figure out they should play to their considerable strengths.

c: Starting with a pre-racial 18 in a non-attack stat is universally dumb if your character actually needs to make attack rolls. As a Warlord who's not a full lazy build, you need to actually hit to make things happen. Not only are you not contributing to party damage yourself, but your Paint The Bullseye buffs don't happen either, for example.

IOW: Swapping INT/STR doesn't mean you have to role play your character any differently, it just makes your character make more logical sense and not be a drain in combat. You can get by with a 16 attack stat at level 1 if you have things to mitigate it, like a mix of proper level magic items as you go, expertise, +3 proficiency wepaon, class boosts, etc. You have a +2 proficiency, not even a 16 and are behind in magic item enchantment.

IOOW: THIS is bad roleplaying because this guy would never have become a credible attacking Warlord:
 
STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 14, CON 10, DEX 10, INT 18, WIS 8, CHA 11

THIS, on the other hand, would allow you to play the character the way you describe AND be a credible candidate to do your job. 

STARTING ABILITY SCORES
STR 16 (18), CON 11, DEX 10, INT 16, WIS 8, CHA 13

Or, IOOOW: your current stat array turns Death From Two Sides in to Direct the Strike.

The Harrowing Swarm feats are nice, Paint The Bull's Eye is your bread & butter early on and not provoking from your target later is a nice benefit if you want to go up close (or get locked down). But that's two feats (Student and Captain)

There's also the Speed Loader feat for the crossbow users, making Superior Crossbow cost two feats.

Dec 7, 2012 -- 1:29PM, renfrew wrote:

Dec 7, 2012 -- 12:21AM, TheMalteseFalchion wrote:

Harrowing Swarm Student is not a good investment on a feat.  You could put it to much better use.

I figure since I'm trained in Intimidate, the -2 debuff on my main at-will (which buffs INT mod damage) would be worth it. But should I be giving this up as my bread and butter attack?

You've got 3 Standard-action Encounter powers.  Are your combats lasting long enough for the Rattling to actually come into play (implication being you should be dropping those Encounter powers first, before using an At-Will)?  After 3 rounds of combat, everything should be nearly dead, and a Rattling attack won't make much difference.

Dec 8, 2012 -- 7:30AM, Scatterbrained wrote:

Dec 7, 2012 -- 3:45PM, TheMalteseFalchion wrote:

You've got 3 Standard-action Encounter powers.  Are your combats lasting long enough for the Rattling to actually come into play (implication being you should be dropping those Encounter powers first, before using an At-Will)?  After 3 rounds of combat, everything should be nearly dead, and a Rattling attack won't make much difference.

Well the 3-round encounter is kind of a high-op thing. Considering the op level of his character and his note that his party is hurting for damage, I'd guess combats last quite a bit longer. But it's a valid point that putting resources into an at-will isn't usually ideal if your encounters are mostly/all standard actions.

These are both great points - We go for more like 6-8 rounds, and often find combat exhausting (which has been the frustration to be more efficient from my point of view). I also had no idea a 3-round battle was typical or preferred.

As I said, the Sorc and I tend to do some "high-op" nova work, but I think the general takeaway from this thread has been we (I) need to read more and sit down to op characters to really grind out what my peers want out of them.

Thanks everyone for the help!