Interludes Q&A / Discussion

[Jeff]

Use this thread for out-of-character discussion for Interlude 2.

[Ken]

Since we're upgrading our PCs during the Interlude, this thread seems appropriate for a reminder, since not everyone here has had to dive into the intricacies of 4th edition as much as Jeff, Mike, and I have in our freelancing work.

I think Jeff has mentioned this elsewhere, but I want to highlight the option of Retraining. From the PHB:

Sometimes you make decisions when you create or advance your character that you later regret. Perhaps a power you chose isn’t working with your character concept, or a feat never comes into play the way you anticipated. Fortunately in such a case, level advancement isn’t only a time to learn new powers—it’s also an opportunity to change some of those decisions.

Every time you gain a level, you can retrain your character: change one feat, power, or skill selection you made previously. You can make only one change at each level.

For instance, when I first created Belarin, he had the Astral Fire feat, which adds damage to radiant and fire attacks. However, that was before Arcane Power came out with new goodies for spellcasters. So at 3rd level, I swapped out Astral Fire (which hadn't come into play often) for Empowering Shadows (which adds +1 damage when Belarin has concealment from his Shadow Walk ... which happens a LOT).

Since we're jumping up two levels, that means you have two opportunties to retrain. A related FYI: For his new feat at 4th level, Belarin is selecting the Sly Dodge rogue multiclass feat which gives him an immediate benefit and also opens the way for him to select Rogue feats or powers later. Now, at 5th level, I could have retrained one of my feats and selected a Power-Swap feat to grab a Rogue power (Belarin DID ask Kal for dagger training! ;D ) but I'll wait a bit longer for that.

[Jeff's backup]

Jeff let me know about the retraining feature. Condign has two first level at-will powers which I plan to trade out. Commander's Strike left him there shouting orders without the ability to attack and do damage; and Furious Smash did all of three points of damage and allowed someone else a bonus to attack and damage rolls. Their weaknesses were very apparent during the last encounter, simply because it lasted so long. Jeff and I are discussing possible replacements, and I need to look at what else Condign can choose from with his new level.

[Jeff]

Incidentally, Ken: there's no reason you (or anyone else here) can't make suggestions for other players.

[Ken]

I'd be happy to! I have all the "____ Power" books (Arcane, Divine, Martial, Primal) so if folks want to know what other options are available, let me know. (For instance, Arcane Power has a Level 1 Daily attack for sorcerers -- Ice Javelins -- that I think Kal would love. )

[Jeff]

Yup. I've got Arcane Power and Martial Power myself.

And Ken, I'm going to give Streko access to some choice cleric powers from you know where.

[Dave W.]

If you're going to invite kibitzing I'll put in a word for commanders strike. I used to play a warlord and used this often. If the rogue had combat adv (we were flanking buddies) but missed with his attack, it gave the party a second shot at that sneak damage. Also if the fighter needed to mark again. It does require a partner for the warlord.
Wolf pack tactics was my favorite 1st level warlod at-will, but commanders strike wasn't bad.

[Darren]

I think the problem we have in PbP is tactics tend to not be very coordinated because we don't really discuss our actions before we post them. It's not a criticism....battles would take FOREVER that way. But it makes certain powers seem less useful.

[Jeff's backup]

I'm in agreement with Darren on this one. PbP limits some of the discussions which would normally go on among group members sitting around a table. Truthfully, I really don't know what anyone is capable of, which limits some of the warlord's usefulness. But the last encounter taught me something about character abilities. ;D

[Jeff]

One thing I'd like to do...not sure how yet...is to create a reference document or thread, somewhere that we can all look during a combat to be reminded of what things to keep in mind.

Just reminders. Like, some of Condign's powers required an ally to be adjacent to him (or to an enemy). So if you see that, then you know to keep close by him, if you can. Stuff like that. Although now some people are swapping out powers, so we'll have to revisit this stuff.

[Jeff]

A little boost I've given each of you: I've implemented the Backgrounds option presented in the Player's Handbook 2, where you get a skill bonus (+2) on a particular skill based on your background. Have a look in your skills to see which one. In general, I favored skills you're not already trained in.

[Ken]

Jan 28, 2010 9:08:17 GMT -4 Jeff said:

One thing I'd like to do...not sure how yet...is to create a reference document or thread, somewhere that we can all look during a combat to be reminded of what things to keep in mind.

Just reminders. Like, some of Condign's powers required an ally to be adjacent to him (or to an enemy). So if you see that, then you know to keep close by him, if you can. Stuff like that. Although now some people are swapping out powers, so we'll have to revisit this stuff.

I fully approve of a "Tactics" thread, where we'd each post what our characters typically like to do in combat and what situations work to our advantage. I'll even start it later today.

Regarding Condign and the choice of Warlord powers, Brian, I think the fault is partially that most of us (including me) weren't familiar with that class and its tactical advantages/reliance. The rest of the "fault" is in the party's makeup, which is what it is. That is, some of the Warlord's powers work great if there's an adjacent ally. However, Belarin is a ranged striker, Grafth is a melee striker who likes to keep moving, Kalarian has a good mix of ranged and melee attacks, and Streko is another leader. I get the feeling that Condign will be much happier when he's fighting alongside Dave's warforged paladin.

In looking through Martial Power, I do see a couple of powers that would have, for instance, allowed Condign to give an ally a "free" attack, as he tried to do with Belarin during the last battle. Concentrated Attack is a Level 1 Daily attack that does damage and enables one ally within 10 squares to make a basic attack (i.e., melee or ranged) against the same target as a free action. Therefore, in the fight with the cube, Condign could have attacked it and -- whether he was successful or not -- have told Belarin to blast it. The only difference is that Belarin would have had to use Eldritch Blast not Eyebite, since Eyebite can't be used as a basic attack.

There's a Level 1 At-Will, Brash Assault, which is similar, but it gives the enemy a free shot at you in the process.

I get the feeling Condign might also like a Level 2 Utility power, Inspired Belligerence: If an enemy currently grants combat advantage to you or an ally, then all your allies gain combat advantage against that enemy until the start of your next turn. If the Warlord has the Inspiring Presence feature, then the allies can add the Warlord's Charisma modifier to their damage rolls.

[Jeff's backup]

Thanks, Ken!! Indeed, Brash Assault is one of the retrained powers that Condign is going to be using. The free shot at Condign is okay; he will be having Inspiring Word and Stand the Fallen to help keep him alive.

He can retrain only one other power, and I decided to take the Level 1 at-will Viper's Strike: it allows Condign to (possibly) do some damage and can trigger a free attack if the enemy moves.

Since he is only allowed two retrains, I felt these would be the most beneficial.

Ken said:

I get the feeling that Condign will be much happier when he's fighting alongside Dave's warforged paladin.

Sigh. It seems great minds think alike. I don't want to go into too many details and spoil the fun, but Condign is going to have a grand time with Adamant. . .eventually.

[Dave W.]

Well, I have to confess I hadn't thought of the quirks of PbP. I suppose that makes sense.

Adamant wouldn't mind having a warlord flanking buddy... It's always nicer with company...

[Mike]

While it might slow things down early in a combat encounter, I think it might be good for people to post in a OOC thread what they're planning on doing, before posting IC.

A lot of the powers we use work better with flanking, etc., and that's a good way of giving a heads-up for possible actions. For example, if my avenger uses menacing presence, the foe I'm fighting gets a -2 penalty to AC. If you know I'm using it, you might want to come over and take advantage of that.

(Although, FWIW, my avenger is a pursuit machine, so he's usually better suited to moving all over the battlefield. Staying put and fighting adjacent to other fighters isn't his style, or at least it's not an efficient use of his powers.)

I don't think we have to declare actions before every round, but just an overview before the real action begins might be good, and if things drastically change during a battle, it might be good to take a OOC timeout and regroup. ("I was going to take out the flunkies by the door. Who's taking on the big guy?")

[Dave W.]

I started thinking (always dangerous) about the nature of PbP and the powers I've picked. I've got a couple that have nice side effects for allies that stay within 3 or 5" but those don't concern me so much; they're quite useful even if none of you get the yummy side effect.

There is one that might be somewhat problematic because it's a triggered effect. It's Martyr's Blessing: when an adjacent ally gets hit by an attack I can (once per day) declare that I'll take the damage from it.

It's a little more complicated because I also have a triggered effect from an item that can give me resistance to an energy type I'm being attacked by. So I had imagined a scene where an adjacent ally would be hit by say a lightning attack and Adamant would invoke Martyr's Blessing to step in front of it and then activate the daily power of an item that would give him Resist 5 Lightning.

They're both daily triggered events that in a F2F would be simple to interrupt. I'm wondering how we'd run that in PbP without unnecessarily slowing things down.

It's really Martyr's Blessing I'm concerned with. If I never get the resist thing to work I'm fine with that, but I like Martyr's Blessing too much to give up on it. It fits the character too perfectly. I'd be perfectly willing to trust Jeff to decide when to pull the trigger on it. That would be way more preferable to me than just ditching the power.

Thoughts?

[Jeff]

I am open to reworking the format of our battles, if you have suggestions. For example, to be the most reflective of tabletop gameplay, when a battle begins, we would just have to post in the order of the initiative count...and I'd need to resolve those actions each time. That's hard to do when we're all checking in on DE at different times of the day.

In essence, rather than me summing up the results of each round in a single post, we take it turn for turn.

But I also suspect this would make our already slow-moving battles at least twice as long.

Any other suggestions are welcome!

[Ken]

You could set up conditions when describing your combat actions for the round. I do this often with Belarin, who can teleport whenever a cursed enemy drops to 0 hp. Many time in the last fight, I'd say, "If the warforged drops to 0 hit points, Belarin will teleport to the upper level." It took 4 rounds, but it finally happened! ;D

Likewise, Dave could write in his combat post, "If Streko or Condign gets struck by an attack from the mage this round, Adamant will use Martyr's Blessing to take the hit." Just copy and paste that line for every round until it comes into play.

Or, if there's an attack that Jeff knows would do a shitload of damage to an adjacent target, Jeff could send Dave a private message: "Dave, I need a quick response from you. I'm rolling the bad guys' attacks, and Kal just got zapped for 20 points. In his current condition, it'll drop him to below 0. Does Adamant want to take the hit instead? If I don't hear back in 3 hours. I'll post the results of the combat round as rolled."

There's no doubt that the nature of PbP makes managing Immediate actions trickier, but I think we can work around it.

[Jeff's backup]

What if each of us were to write a summary of our character's combat style and what attacks we typically use? And what we need from the others to make combat more formidable? Like Dave said, two characters can be flanking buddies and then we know that those two will always move into flanking positions on a common enemy. Just a thought.

[Darren]

I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to that, Brian. Kal's got a bunch of powers that work on a target plus adjacent enemies, and he often doesn't get to use them because all of his allies are also adjacent.

As for triggered powers, what Ken said basically has worked for Kal, too. If I expect a triggered effect might be useful, I just give conditions for when I'll use it. Jeff is pretty good about handling that. It's rarely been an issue.

Jeff, I wouldn't really want to re-work the way we do combat. I think it works well enough. We, as players, just need to understand the limitations of PbP.

[Mike]

One other thing to consider (which I'd done when playing Torhak, and in other PbP games) - it doesn't hurt to e-mail other players offline and go "hey, this is what I was thinking we could do together - are you in?"

The main limitation of PbP, which is what I'm trying to avoid, is seeing players' actions unfold - and then realizing collectively that there was a better way of doing things, which might've been possible with even a little more planning or discussion. The way things in DE currently works is fine, but if they can made to work a little better, I'm all for that, even if it means a couple of extra posts.

[Dave W.]

I don't want to slow down combat and I'm certainly not the expert on PbP.

I like the concept of letting the DM contact a player oog, to give them the option of invoking an interrupt. The one downside for me though is I can't check the boards at work and I spend far too much time at work. I could respond to email. That I can check at work.

[Jeff]

You'll notice some new avatars. Don't worry...I've checked with those players before changing them, to get permission. I have no intention of changing yours, Ken. That's the perfect Belarin, I think. Unless one of us someday stumbles on an even better one.

Anyway, the thing about emailing you guys for specifics in the midst of battle is that the timing is still off. I tend to wait until I've got all actions in before sitting down and going through the numbers in their correct orders. Which means I'd have to pause and wait for replies and keep coming back to it. Tricky.

[Darren]

I miss Grafth looking over Belarin's shoulder. Seemed appropriate. Like the voices in Belarin's head....

[Jeff]

So as you've probably seen, I've been mucking around in your character sheet docs in hopes of making them easier to work with. Still some spots that need work.

Anyway, I really, really, really want to make sure everyone understands where their numbers come from. So I wanted to point you to the new way I've organized the powers. The important thing to note is that text in blue is customized for you, with your numbers plugged in.

Let's just Kal wants to make a basic melee attack (like he would if he was making an opportunity attack):

So in this case, if Kal uses his sharash, it's a total of +8 on the attack roll and 1d10+3 damage. If he uses the Rekkenmark blade, it's a total of +9 on the attack roll and 1d8+3 damage.

Make sense? Any suggestions or questions about this?

[Dave W.]

The only suggestion I'd make is that instead of modifiers display the totals by weapon. So in the example it would be:

Modifiers:
+8 w/sharash (base +4, proficiency +3, enhancement +1)
+9 w/Rekkenmark Longsword (base +4, proficiency +3, enhancement +1, Weapon Fighter Talent +1)


That way it's all added up once in one place. I threw the base modifier in the parens to be clear. It's not a big deal, but it seems clearer to me if you're going to total pluses up you might as well total them all up.

[Darren]

Oh, interesting. Until Dave wrote what he did, I didn't even realize that's how it worked.

Of course, I always just declare actions and let Jeff take care of the mechanics, anyway. ;D

[Jeff]

The only suggestion I'd make is that instead of modifiers display the totals by weapon.

That's actually more how I used to have it. But with just a single number up I feel the formal was overlooked. Separating the base ability score attack number (which always remains constant) from the various modifiers seemed a good way to educate.

Still, if everyone prefers that, I'll change it.

Of course, I always just declare actions and let Jeff take care of the mechanics, anyway.

Except that's not going to fly anymore. When you make an attack, whether you roll or not, I'd like you to tell me what the roll modifier should be. Or at least try. Otherwise I'll just make a d20 roll and leave it at that, Darren.

[Darren]

That is really difficult to do when I'm checking in from my phone or during a 2 minute break that I get during the course of the day. I mean, I can try, but it'll probably just slow the game down.

I'm not really trying to make excuses, I'm just....well, I guess I'm making excuses. But they're valid.

[Dave W.]

I wasn't suggesting not listing all the pluses in parens; I like that. I'm all for education