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bluegargantuaHey,
So we're taking a break from our normal D&D game to run a short 2-3 session high level game. All the PCs are 22nd level. We're doing this because one of the players will be going into "newborn" mode in a few months and will probably have to drop the game for awhile and he really wanted to try out some high-level 4th ed. play to see what it's like.
I'm playing a Droll Beastmaster Ranger/Shock Trooper/God Hunter named Indal. A Droll is part drow, part Gnoll. Mechanically, I'm just using a Gnoll PC template. Indal is a large Gnoll with black fur, except around his head where it's white. He has solid white eyes and elf ears instead of hyena ears. So the Droll part is purely cosmetic. But funny.
The reason for Indal's condition is that he said the wrong thing at the wrong time, Lolth overheard him, and she turned him into a Droll. Or as Indal puts it: "Lolth, she's a funny lady *twitch*". Indal's long-range plan is to figure out a funny joke to tell Lolth. His Epic Destiny should suggest it'll probably be a bit of physical comedy. Until then, Indal works for an uber-NPC maintaining his vast collection of horrific artifacts and horrific beings imprisoned in horrific artifacts.
Enough backstory. Before I get to my initial thoughts on high-level play, I want to mention the new Beastmaster Ranger build found in the Martial Powers handbook. For this build, you give up the Prime Shot ranger power in exchange for a beast who will follow you around and help you out. There are several different beasts to choose from and you're encouraged to come up with your own beast and just apply the stats of a listed beast that most closely fits. Because I'm a droll, I really wanted a hyena companion. So I just used the wolf stats and called it a hyena.
My hyena's name is Snickers.
Mr. Snickers if you're formal.
Because you lose the prime shot class ability, the beastmaster build is probably best suited to heavy use of the twin-weapon powers and close in fights. And that's pretty much how I built Indal out. So he and Snickers rush in and slice, dice and bite.
One important note. The beast will move with you when you take a move action, but if you want it to make an attack, you have to spend a standard action to order him to do so (or use a power that allows your beast to take an attack). There's an Epic level feat called "Quick Command" that let's you order your beast as a minor and that's a must-have feat. There were some situations in last night's fights that went much better because I could move, then order the beast to attack as a minor, allowing me to take a shot. At lower levels my choices would've been much more constrained.
Overall, it's a fun build. For the most part, Snicker's purpose in life is to give me combat advantage against my foes, I made very few direct attacks with him because I simply deal a lot more damage on average. But against waves of minions, we could get completely stuck in and lash out at three different targets at once with a pretty good chance of wiping them all out. The super-archer is still probably the best path for a ranger to follow, but the beastmaster is a fun option.
Oh, and managing Snickers during the fight wasn't too taxing either, something I worried about. It helps that I he was rarely targeted, but keeping track of his status wasn't too hard.
So, how about those high-level PCs?
SO MANY MODIFIERS!!!
Cripes there are a lot of little plusses here and there that apply under different conditions and it can be a real pain to keep track of all of them. I get +18 on my damage rolls straight up, +2 if there are more than 2 allies adjacent to my target, +4 if I'm blooded, +5 if I use my once-per-round paragon path power and probably a couple of others I've missed. My AC goes up by 1 when Snickers is adjacent to me. Lots of crazy little things like that.
I know that part of the problem is that the characters were built up from scratch and this is our first time playing. If I'd been regularly running Indal for a few levels, I'd probably have a better sense of what my modifiers were in any given situation, but it's still a monstrous amount of stuff to keep track of.
Other than that the combat was a lot of fun. 4th ed's big trick is to keep the underlying game math basically static while layering on the chrome. Sure we're kicking out 30-50 points of damage on our at-will attacks, but everyone's hit points/defenses are scaling the same way so the fights basically took as long as they would at lower levels. But with all the Encounters and Dailies and Paragon/Epic powers and stuff it all *feels* over-the-top kick-ass. You have more options and choices, but they're usually not overwhelming. Your selection of feats and paths mean that you can really accentuate what you think is important in the class. So Indal is super-mobile and optimized to dish out twin-strike melee damage. The dwarven warlock decked out in platemail was essentially a teleporting sentry gun. The barbarian got very very angry. You really feel like a total bad-ass.
Of course, it also helped that we got more critical hits last night (on the PC side of the table) than we've ever gotten in the past six months of gaming combined. I'm pretty sure every PC got at least one crit and I got two. When I was looking over the magic weapons, I went out of my way to avoid weapons with powers that only kicked in on a crit -- cause I *never* roll crits. Still, even a basic +5 sword is an extra 5d6 of damage on top of everything else and rolling all those dice is really satisfying.
We've got another session or two so we'll see how it goes, but aside from all the friggin modifiers, I'm really enjoying myself.
later
Tom
So we're taking a break from our normal D&D game to run a short 2-3 session high level game. All the PCs are 22nd level. We're doing this because one of the players will be going into "newborn" mode in a few months and will probably have to drop the game for awhile and he really wanted to try out some high-level 4th ed. play to see what it's like.
I'm playing a Droll Beastmaster Ranger/Shock Trooper/God Hunter named Indal. A Droll is part drow, part Gnoll. Mechanically, I'm just using a Gnoll PC template. Indal is a large Gnoll with black fur, except around his head where it's white. He has solid white eyes and elf ears instead of hyena ears. So the Droll part is purely cosmetic. But funny.
The reason for Indal's condition is that he said the wrong thing at the wrong time, Lolth overheard him, and she turned him into a Droll. Or as Indal puts it: "Lolth, she's a funny lady *twitch*". Indal's long-range plan is to figure out a funny joke to tell Lolth. His Epic Destiny should suggest it'll probably be a bit of physical comedy. Until then, Indal works for an uber-NPC maintaining his vast collection of horrific artifacts and horrific beings imprisoned in horrific artifacts.
Enough backstory. Before I get to my initial thoughts on high-level play, I want to mention the new Beastmaster Ranger build found in the Martial Powers handbook. For this build, you give up the Prime Shot ranger power in exchange for a beast who will follow you around and help you out. There are several different beasts to choose from and you're encouraged to come up with your own beast and just apply the stats of a listed beast that most closely fits. Because I'm a droll, I really wanted a hyena companion. So I just used the wolf stats and called it a hyena.
My hyena's name is Snickers.
Mr. Snickers if you're formal.
Because you lose the prime shot class ability, the beastmaster build is probably best suited to heavy use of the twin-weapon powers and close in fights. And that's pretty much how I built Indal out. So he and Snickers rush in and slice, dice and bite.
One important note. The beast will move with you when you take a move action, but if you want it to make an attack, you have to spend a standard action to order him to do so (or use a power that allows your beast to take an attack). There's an Epic level feat called "Quick Command" that let's you order your beast as a minor and that's a must-have feat. There were some situations in last night's fights that went much better because I could move, then order the beast to attack as a minor, allowing me to take a shot. At lower levels my choices would've been much more constrained.
Overall, it's a fun build. For the most part, Snicker's purpose in life is to give me combat advantage against my foes, I made very few direct attacks with him because I simply deal a lot more damage on average. But against waves of minions, we could get completely stuck in and lash out at three different targets at once with a pretty good chance of wiping them all out. The super-archer is still probably the best path for a ranger to follow, but the beastmaster is a fun option.
Oh, and managing Snickers during the fight wasn't too taxing either, something I worried about. It helps that I he was rarely targeted, but keeping track of his status wasn't too hard.
So, how about those high-level PCs?
SO MANY MODIFIERS!!!
Cripes there are a lot of little plusses here and there that apply under different conditions and it can be a real pain to keep track of all of them. I get +18 on my damage rolls straight up, +2 if there are more than 2 allies adjacent to my target, +4 if I'm blooded, +5 if I use my once-per-round paragon path power and probably a couple of others I've missed. My AC goes up by 1 when Snickers is adjacent to me. Lots of crazy little things like that.
I know that part of the problem is that the characters were built up from scratch and this is our first time playing. If I'd been regularly running Indal for a few levels, I'd probably have a better sense of what my modifiers were in any given situation, but it's still a monstrous amount of stuff to keep track of.
Other than that the combat was a lot of fun. 4th ed's big trick is to keep the underlying game math basically static while layering on the chrome. Sure we're kicking out 30-50 points of damage on our at-will attacks, but everyone's hit points/defenses are scaling the same way so the fights basically took as long as they would at lower levels. But with all the Encounters and Dailies and Paragon/Epic powers and stuff it all *feels* over-the-top kick-ass. You have more options and choices, but they're usually not overwhelming. Your selection of feats and paths mean that you can really accentuate what you think is important in the class. So Indal is super-mobile and optimized to dish out twin-strike melee damage. The dwarven warlock decked out in platemail was essentially a teleporting sentry gun. The barbarian got very very angry. You really feel like a total bad-ass.
Of course, it also helped that we got more critical hits last night (on the PC side of the table) than we've ever gotten in the past six months of gaming combined. I'm pretty sure every PC got at least one crit and I got two. When I was looking over the magic weapons, I went out of my way to avoid weapons with powers that only kicked in on a crit -- cause I *never* roll crits. Still, even a basic +5 sword is an extra 5d6 of damage on top of everything else and rolling all those dice is really satisfying.
We've got another session or two so we'll see how it goes, but aside from all the friggin modifiers, I'm really enjoying myself.
later
Tom
