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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 10:37AM
#11
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Date Joined:
Jan 12, 2013
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Except monk will probably do a better job than the wizard or cleric with ethereal body being available. Our monk ruined our sessions once it got to around level 11, with no fault to the DM or player. The DM had to customize traps to deal with the monk dealing with all the traps and tricky enemy with ease (monk in front, all the time, every time).
I agree every class has areas where they shine, except for the monk. Our DM had to designed entire scenarios around the monk without making it too intrusive/anti-monk. If every class is a star twinkling in the sky, the monk is the equivalent of the sun blocking them out.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 30, 2013 - 9:23PM
#12
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Date Joined:
Mar 16, 2007
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Yeah, maybe. Monks seem to have a lot of utility that the other melee hitters don't have. Worse, flurry may not be as much of a problem now, since there are so few static mods, but eventually some version of Iron Armbands of Power or Lasting Frost will come along and monks will be trippling their rewards.
So I may be wrong about monks, but fighters and barbarians seem far too narrowly focused to edge out the usefullness of clerics and wizards.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 8:01AM
#13
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I dunno. Every time I estimate Fighter damage output, I come to the conclusion that it is fine at low levels, and needs boosting by the upper teens. I'm not worried about melee dominance. I'm very actively worried that melee is going to get nerfed into the ground.
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 8:25AM
#14
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Date Joined:
Jun 17, 2010
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It's hard to be enthusiastic about this packet when the major flaws of the previous weren't addressed at all.
Considering this wasn't intended to be a major update, I'm not clear why you're upset.
D&D Next = D&D: Quantum Edition
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5 months ago ::
Jan 31, 2013 - 2:03PM
#15
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Date Joined:
Dec 21, 2011
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I forsaw a problem when I saw the sentence "rage will basically last an entire encounter." Rage ends when the barb does not attack. If your DM read that sentence and his head didn't start turning on how to exploit that, you have a terrible DM.
This is something I'd like D&D Next to avoid. As DM, I don't want to have to exploit the system/abilities to challenge the players. If DMs have to do that, DMing will not be easy/fun. DMs have enough to worry about and plan. They have to develop the adventure, the world, the story/narration, keep players engaged, balance risks and rewards, multitask and communicate with and between multiple players, etc. They should not have to expend time and energy devising ways to challenge PCs if the designers of the game can get it right by providing DMs with the proper tools and a system that sets a reliable challenge for leveled or above leveled encounters.
In my experiences, over time, when DMs purposely "mess" with the system to take advantage of rules/abilities to harm or challenge their players, players start to feel used or manipulated. There would be no point playing a a barbarian that rages if an unnaturally large number of encounters were forced to play out at a distance, or if foes ran away fast enough to escape the raging barbarian.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 01, 2013 - 1:55PM
#16
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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I dunno. Every time I estimate Fighter damage output, I come to the conclusion that it is fine at low levels, and needs boosting by the upper teens. I'm not worried about melee dominance. I'm very actively worried that melee is going to get nerfed into the ground.
Um, that is not the case. I have run the numbers. At level 7+ magic users start evening out in capabilities against the martial characters (with martial characters still having the edge in damage over the course of 16-20 rounds, but magic users starting to be able to outdamage martial characters for a growing number of rounds until the 20th level wizard can outdamage a fighter for roughly 10 rounds. I would need to do the math again to find the exact number. From level 1-6 martial characters clearly outperform magic users.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 02, 2013 - 6:24PM
#17
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I think when we look at just numbers we miss a lot of details. Fighters, Monks, and Barbarians do substantially more damage than clerics and wizards, but only under ideal circumstances where you have lazy encounters of monsters standing in doorways. But this isn't 4ed anymore. There are a multitude of challenges that are better handled by a wizard or a cleric.
4E? You mean the only edition to actually care about movement and positioning to any real degree? The only editions that fully supports the ability of characters to lock down or severly hamper the ability of the enemy from being able to just run past any opposition WITHOUT them being stuck in a hallway? The only edition where nearly every single monster, even the ones that are traditionally "throwaway" like kobolds, have interesting, often unique mechanics that force the players to change their tactics or suffer? And where EVERY member of the party contributes to challenges in different ways and is best suited for handling specific types of threats to protect their allies or exploit enemy weaknesses, rather than a handful of them being able to warp reality and instantly solve basicly every problem while the rest can't even stop a kobold from running past them?
Trying to bash 4E for no reason did nothing but hurt your arguement, and I hope in the future you avoid doing that.
EVERY DAY IS HORRIBLE POST DAY ON THE D&D FORUMS.
Everything makes me ANGRY (ESPECIALLY you, reader)
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5 months ago ::
Feb 02, 2013 - 9:03PM
#18
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I dunno. Every time I estimate Fighter damage output, I come to the conclusion that it is fine at low levels, and needs boosting by the upper teens. I'm not worried about melee dominance. I'm very actively worried that melee is going to get nerfed into the ground.
Um, that is not the case. I have run the numbers. At level 7+ magic users start evening out in capabilities against the martial characters (with martial characters still having the edge in damage over the course of 16-20 rounds, but magic users starting to be able to outdamage martial characters for a growing number of rounds until the 20th level wizard can outdamage a fighter for roughly 10 rounds. I would need to do the math again to find the exact number. From level 1-6 martial characters clearly outperform magic users.
I actually wasn't talking about Fighter vs Wizard balance. I was talking about Fighter vs Monster balance. Going back and rechecking my numbers, I'll admit I was slightly off. The *current* Fighter, *when equipped with magic weapons* (which I hadn't included earlier) does *ok* (no more!) against the current monsters.
Fighters outdamaging Wizards (heavily) is where we want to be. Here is a way to look at it: if in a "standard Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric" party, the Rogue and Wizard do about 80% percent of the Fighter's damage, and the Cleric 60%, then the party damage total is 320% of a Fighter. But that means dropping the Fighter for another Wizard (or even Cleric if you want someone tankier) only drops the party offense by 6.25% or 12.5% respectively, with a massive gain in spell utility (and maybe healing). If someone *really* wants to play a Fighter, well, he is only screwing over the party noteably (but not catastrophically). Drop the Wizard/Rogue to 70% and the Cleric to 40% and things get a little bit better, as a Fighter->Wizard swap loses you a bit over 10%. Even then, the Fighter isn't pulling his own weight.
Or if you want to draw on RL experience, Fighters *absolutely destroyed* everyone else in damage in 1e/2e. We are talking outdamaging Thieves and Wizards by over factors of 2 (3-5 by lvl9ish although Thieves could catch up some if the DM was lenient about backstab) and Clerics by up-to/over factors of 10. Their defensive edge was *vast*. Were they considered overpowered? Heck no.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 04, 2013 - 12:50AM
#19
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I also note that a Barbarian, like a Monk, can have a better AC buck naked than an armored knight.. and they move faster and can use both hands. Add in bracer of defense and an amulet and who wants to wear armor?
I might be misreading this, but the monk and barbarian do not simply add there wisdom/constitution to their AC. Each of their class features redefines how their AC is calculated. The barcer of defense also redefines the AC calculation for the wearer. I do not recall reading any special rules for monks or barbarians who wear a bracer of defense. So as I read it, they either get the AC calculation from their class or the one from bracer of defense. Just my interpretation.
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5 months ago ::
Feb 04, 2013 - 9:45AM
#20
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Date Joined:
Sep 20, 2004
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I dunno. Every time I estimate Fighter damage output, I come to the conclusion that it is fine at low levels, and needs boosting by the upper teens. I'm not worried about melee dominance. I'm very actively worried that melee is going to get nerfed into the ground.
Um, that is not the case. I have run the numbers. At level 7+ magic users start evening out in capabilities against the martial characters (with martial characters still having the edge in damage over the course of 16-20 rounds, but magic users starting to be able to outdamage martial characters for a growing number of rounds until the 20th level wizard can outdamage a fighter for roughly 10 rounds. I would need to do the math again to find the exact number. From level 1-6 martial characters clearly outperform magic users.
I actually wasn't talking about Fighter vs Wizard balance. I was talking about Fighter vs Monster balance. Going back and rechecking my numbers, I'll admit I was slightly off. The *current* Fighter, *when equipped with magic weapons* (which I hadn't included earlier) does *ok* (no more!) against the current monsters.
Fighters outdamaging Wizards (heavily) is where we want to be. Here is a way to look at it: if in a "standard Fighter/Rogue/Wizard/Cleric" party, the Rogue and Wizard do about 80% percent of the Fighter's damage, and the Cleric 60%, then the party damage total is 320% of a Fighter. But that means dropping the Fighter for another Wizard (or even Cleric if you want someone tankier) only drops the party offense by 6.25% or 12.5% respectively, with a massive gain in spell utility (and maybe healing). If someone *really* wants to play a Fighter, well, he is only screwing over the party noteably (but not catastrophically). Drop the Wizard/Rogue to 70% and the Cleric to 40% and things get a little bit better, as a Fighter->Wizard swap loses you a bit over 10%. Even then, the Fighter isn't pulling his own weight.
Or if you want to draw on RL experience, Fighters *absolutely destroyed* everyone else in damage in 1e/2e. We are talking outdamaging Thieves and Wizards by over factors of 2 (3-5 by lvl9ish although Thieves could catch up some if the DM was lenient about backstab) and Clerics by up-to/over factors of 10. Their defensive edge was *vast*. Were they considered overpowered? Heck no.
Um, thieves were horribly underpowered in 2e. And, things were not balanced between wizards and fighters either. 2e was better, in terms of balance, than 3e, but it was not great. I find your logic backward. I want things to be balanced. But, I don't want the fighter to outshine everyone. And, this time around, while wizards do have versatility, they don't have nearly enough versatility to justify the kind of imbalance you seem to desire. Things are fine the way they are now, minus a few spells that need to be tweaked.
Also, fighters are far better vs. monsters than you are giving them credit for. Between their DPR, HP, Def, and parry tey are very effective.
We will have to agree to disagree.
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