What is the least useful class in 4th Ed D&D?

Runepriest got a good amount of material in a dragon magazine.

Thief I actually really like and gets a lot of out of combat utility, so I recommend it for OP.

Actually, if OP really wants to be an idiot, he can just misattribute stats.

It's not so much that no other edition of D&D is about slaying the dragon - they're all about slaying the dragon.

It's more that the rules of 4E tell us that at first level, a party of 5 adventurers going up against 5 goblin skirmishers is supposed to take about an hour to resolve. That's a *lot* of playtime to devote to a random encounter, so unless you want to spend a lot of time fighting irrevelant bullshit, you have to take the random encounters out, and they were one of the primary drivers of the exploration game.

>a party of 5 adventurers going up against 5 goblin skirmishers is supposed to take about an hour to resolve.

It's not... assuming that is a level appropriate encounter, there's some pretty strong goblin skirmishers. Very simple encounters like that should take 30 minutes tops, if your players know their shit (and if they don't know their shit at level 1, when their characters are at their simplest, you may as well abandon all hope).

But you are right in that 4e doesn't handle trash encounters well; they just aren't as fun as regular encounters, which means you are incentivized to do regular encounters even for random encounters, which are lengthier... but nothing in the game actually forces you to do this.

Combat takes a long time because it's made up of (5+5)*4 turns, and this is because of the same initiative system D&D has always had.

combat goes really fast in any edition if your turns boil down to move and attack, but something about having to remember specific details about attacks inflicts people with slight decision paralysis.

>Vampire, Assassin and Seeker
What was so bad about those classes? I only played a short 4e game one time.

No. Initiative in 2e and AD&D is NOT the same as 3.x and on.

I started implementing timers and people declaring their turns up basically being a cue for the next guy to go. 4e's one of those where it can go really fast for what it carries with its skirmish wargaming leanings if you basically tell the players to keep attention and do your best as a GM to keep the game moving quickly. And honestly, the issue with 4e isn't so much option excess but more that you have to think things through for once. You can't just attack, your attacks and your position now have meaning, even if it's just repositioning for an attack.

Besides, "trash" encounters in 4e can be very fun if you implement basic tactics such as enemies that deal extra damage versus prone targets in conjunction with enemies that knock prone, or say, strong defensive enemies with attacks that slow in conjunction with weak but damaging ranged backline enemies, especially given that MM3 on a business card is a thing.

Assassin: original just doesn't work, has badly thought out features and little support, Executioner (a different Assassin) has Essentialitis, falls off very hard hand has few options overall.

Vampire and Seeker just have very few choices to make (they simply don't have powers to choose from), which makes them very limited. Vampire is also held back by its surge shenans and being "Y shaped", not having enough powers to focus on 1 secondary stat instead of two.

All of them hybrid pretty well, however.

>vampire
Theoretically a class focused on damage that does really fucking weak damage. Good at tanking damage, but you really need to push it for it to be even decent.
>Assassin
Another damage class. This time, it hits one turn later. 4e's a very nova focused game - you want stuff right out of the gate, not a slow burner.
>Seeker
It's actually pretty decent, due to having some of the greatest movement fuckery in the game (seriously, they're known for being able to thrown spanners in the works of monster formations). Thing is, most of their powers are downright useless, and they suffer from a few very basic things that most controllers just have it as part of their kit (in particular multi-target controlling and minion clearage). You need to play optimally to keep up with a Psion or a Druid, nevermind an Invoker or a Wizard. Hell, the best one that's been optimized to date is part Ranger.

Now, keep in mind 4e's skill floor and skill ceiling aren't even that distant from one another. They're not so "bad" to the point where they're unplayable so to speak, like a Monk would be in 3.5. But comparatively a Seeker will have a much harder time being able to turn an encounter on its head than a Wizard would, and an Assassin would have way more difficulty wiping out a key target from the board than a Ranger would.

Vampire is a weird class, it's not exactly bad but it's not focused. You could play a Vampire as a solo PC and do just fine, but in a party you're not good enough at any one thing to pull your weight.

Have you considered not being a craven little shithead and just telling them you don't want to play, like an adult?

>I have an incredibly combat oriented DM/Player base so I wanna be all roleplay and shitty in combat just to be spiteful.
>I CHOOSE to play with people I don't like, a system I don't like so I'll be a cunt

wew, feels good to know I'll never be this bitter in my life.

Runepriest is actually very good considering how little support it got.

>triple vampire

I think there was Werewolf in there as well. Someone was able to make a Double Vampire Noble Robot-Zombie Psychic Werewolf that wields Triple Bladed Boomerangs
warosu.org/tg/thread/29805243#p29807840

>Nobody mentioning that you get every important vampire feature from a single multiclass feat
Doesn't make the class any worse, but worth putting out there

>vampire is a class
Holy shit how does anyone take this seriously?

4e is explicitly designed to be combat-focused though, it's why there aren't any good-aligned monsters or spells that do things outside of combat. In other editions there's an assumption you'll be doing things besides fight, but 4e is a fucking video game.

b8

Not because I disagree, but because coming into a 4e thread and calling it a video game is either retardation or bait.

>Instead of just doing anything else, I'll sabotage my chances of having a good time by intentionally making a character who's bad at what the game is about! Then I'll waste my own time doing something I don't enjoy in an attempt to keep other people from enjoying it! That'll show them!

apparently you dont have any friends

YEAH, I am a revenant (human) vampire / paladin hybrid class. Fuck you!

How am I the one who doesn't have friends? Is agreeing to do something that's supposed to be fun with other people, just so you can try to keep them from having fun what friends do?

Well said. I recently ditched one of my group because the game they ran just wasn't fun anymore. If they purge their parasitical elements I'll rejoin. No sense in participating in something I genuinely stopped enjoying.

>Spells that do things outside of combat
Plenty of skill powers are applicable outside of combat, also Rituals and Martial Practices are a thing. You just don't have Knock which basically overshadows the Rogue.

Except that you do have Knock.

It just can't be used to easily replace people with skills.

>supposed to take about an hour to resolve
Nowhere in the game does it say you should take forever to resolve basic stuff.

>That's a *lot* of playtime to devote to a random encounter
What the game does tell you, however, is not to have random encounters that just waste time. A fight is either meaningful, or has no place in the game.

Let me guess, you spent more time talking about the game than actually playing.

D&D has always been combat focused, even during the dark days of the 90s, where some players thought making deliberately gimped characters was the height of roleplaying.

Of course there are good-aligned monsters. They're just not all good-aligned because that's stupid.

>Combat with Goblins at level 1
>With no external gimmicks
>An hour
At that point in the game, a turn can reasonably be expected to take ten seconds, but let's double that to 20. That means a round takes around 3 minutes 20 seconds. This means that your party is taking 18 rounds to kill 5 goblins.

A turn in 4e takes way more than 20 seconds. The fastest turn-takers (those who know the rules backwards and forwards, never make small talk or say anything not related to the rules of the game, print out all their powers instead of having to look them up, plan their turn ahead of time, and never attempt to improvise a stunt or do anything else requiring a DM ruling) could take a turn and have the DM resolve all its effects in maybe 30 seconds if nobody takes any reactions. All the other kinds of players, the vast majority, will take much longer.

The best way to make a useless class is to make a hybrid of two classes that don't go very well together. Pick two classes with different roles that use different primary ability scores and different hitting-you-items (weapons, implements, ki focuses, etc.) They'll probably be awful together.

Don't doubt player slowness if they're new. Even if you do something as simple as Goblins with static damage that deal more damage while flanking, if your Rogue spends a minute deciding if he wants to move and Ironwrought Dazing Strike a Goblin because he's new and isn't think on his feet the moment he hears "Roll for initiative". So most people think 4e's slow. It's not, but you need experienced players.

What if I told you that elf was a class for 20 years?

>video game
Nigger it was fucking world of warcraft, don’t mince words

Werewolf, Werebear and Wererat were Character Themes in an issue of Dragon Magazine.

4e being wow has never had a convincing argument made for it ever. It's just something people spout off when they want to make a dig at the system.

Especially since WoTC literally put out a book a good, what, two or three years before 4e hit the shelves saying that Roles go all the way back to OD&D's Fighting Man, Magic User and Thief core class setup.

>4e only has rules for combat and they're good
>gets called a video game
>other editions only have rules for combat and they're shit
>this is okay
Explain this.

Stop being dense. 4e had lots of major features that it had in common with WoW. There's the whole concept of monster aggro and the redesign of classes in terms of tank-dps-healer-mezzer roles. There's the fact that every PC has an action bar full of powers with varying rates of cooldown. There's the overtly inflated numbers. There's also the strict magic item economy where magic items are available in every town, but only within your immediate level range, and this range is so narrow that you have to keep recreating stuff or selling it back to vendors.

bad marketing. Some of the early ads for 4e specifically targeted the WoW players. WotC was hoping that players would be able to see a superficial connection between the games and that would be associated with their branding.

...they were right. The dumbest troll meme used to discredit 4e was a product of wotc marketing. It's possibly the most tone-deaf error ever made by the D&D division.

Of course, D&D in any edition doesn't really have anything to do with a video game, but the meme stuck. Maybe nobody here remembers when 3e was called "P&P diablo"

I'm not being dense. I'm intimately familiar with 4e and that has informed me on how similar or not it would be from an MMO.

>There's the whole concept of monster aggro
literally not a concept in 4e. marking is a punisher mechanic.

> redesign of classes in terms of tank-dps-healer-mezzer roles.
This is not derived from WoW. Class roles are a relic of both wargames, and literally any game, sport, or teamwork activity.

>There's the fact that every PC has an action bar full of powers with varying rates of cooldown.
Usage restrictions go back to at least 3e. Barbarians and rogues had "daily" skills under a different name.

>There's the overtly inflated numbers.
The game scales to level 30 in the core. If it only went to 20, the numbers would be smaller.

>There's also the strict magic item economy where magic items are available in every town, but only within your immediate level range, and this range is so narrow that you have to keep recreating stuff or selling it back to vendors.
The magic item economy was born in 3e.

>There's the whole concept of monster aggro
Does not exist. AD&D had engagement rules and 3.5 had literal MMO taunts and both of those are much closer to aggro than 4E's marks, which were designed based on the former anyways.
>and the redesign of classes in terms of tank-dps-healer-mezzer roles
Stolen from D&D to begin with.
>There's the overtly inflated numbers.
4E has lower numbers than 3.5 almost across the board. Aside from that small stretch of the game at very low levels where the frontloaded bonuses give you higher attack and skill bonuses and HP than you would have in 3.5 and monster HP, everything is lower.
>There's also the strict magic item economy where magic items are available in every town
Not applicable to WoW at all.

3.5 may have bigger numbers, but it's less obvious how unnecessary their size is. In 4e you literally add half your level to everything so you might as well just not and say you did.

>There's the whole concept of monster aggro
I want you to explain your concept of this so I can laugh.

In 4e, a monster of a given level has slightly higher AC, hit, and damage than one that has a lower level. This stepping occurs at about the minimum level, which is 1/level.

In order to scale with monsters, PCs have attribute bonus increases, feats that increase their hit rate, and magic items. However, this all wouldn't be enough to have PCs keep up with a monster of their level unless a PC literally gained a +2 to a stat or a better weapon with every single level. The half level modifier fills up the rest of the scaling.

In this way, every number in 4e is pretty much the minimum it needs to be to have scaling from 1 to 30. 4e is definitely not an example of number inflating purely for the sake of larger numbers, like what you see in japanese TCGs.

That sounds like bounded accuracy and bounded accuracy left HP and damage as the only real scaling tools for monsters in 5E. It also made the skill system shit.

Rather than just having classes that can take hits better than others, 4e had "defenders" focused on making monsters attack them even if better targets are available. This wasn't done directly like in MMOs because tracking each monster's aggro value relative to each PC would be too much bookkeeping even for 4e, but the effect is the same. A game rule makes the monsters act stupidly because they'll be punished for acting smart.

You're an idiot if you think attacking the defender is always the better choice over eating the punishment.

You're taking it as a foregone conclusion that you need that much scaling over the course of 30 levels, particularly in the area of attack and defense bonuses. That's not a foregone conclusion, not least because no other edition did it like that before or since.

That's a common misconception about 4e mechanics. The truth is that defenders do not manipulate anything that you would call aggro. The monsters in 4e behave as they would according to their tactics and intelligence. A zombie is going to shamble at whatever is in front of them and a sneaky kobold is going to try to dart around.

What makes defenders work in 4e is that they all have mechanics for punishing monsters in different ways whenever they try to escape. For example, the fighter gets free attacks whenever a monster tries to move or shift away from them.

In this way, marking is less about aggro and its more about being an extension of attack of opportunity. AoO punishes monsters for trying to get away from the fighter, but it doesn't "aggro" monsters. AoO is a design that goes back to at least 3e.

Part of what makes fighters fun to play in 4e is that they are very, VERY threatening once they are on top of somebody, and their stickiness means trying to get past or around them can be very difficult.

Yes, and most editions had poor math that didn't work well past 6th level.

Bounded accuracy is a fucking breath of fresh air. It opens you up to use so many more different monsters, not just those within two levels of the party. In 4e you can't even use low-level monsters as mooks, you have to use minions that are the same level as the party but that somehow made it through life with only 1 HP. Five-sixths of the monster manual (or more if you're near the beginning or end) is absolutely unusable.

>that somehow made it through life with only 1 HP
How can I tell you never played 4e?

>not least because no other edition did it like that
2E: +2 to +27 over 20 levels with a literal 10 in STR. More than that if you managed to get STR or a magic item that sets it to a high number.
3E: +5 to +36 over 20 levels, far more than that with optimization, even more than that if you go into epic levels.
And you bitch about 4E going from +7 to somewhere in the 40s over 30 levels?

The defenders' different methods of punishing monsters were all something the monsters were explicitly aware of according to the rules. Yes, even the most mindless zombie or cowardly kobold was supposed to behave optimally and know when it's marked and what that means. There was no room for acting in-character on either side of the GM screen.

No, fuck bounded accuracy, it's a shit idea that runs contrary to every other edition of the game.

That's not necessary man, especially after a relatively sober assessment of monster usage by level.

Minions essentially have to only be minions while within the theater of the game. They represent monsters that aren't strong enough to take even one hit from the PCs. If they were important enough to warrant use outside of being mooks, then they wouldn't be minions. It's a narrative stretch that some people don't like.

Not necessarily. Defenders work on the idea of presenting two very bad options to the enemies. Aggro just says "attack me". 4e Defenders want to stop enemies from getting to their allies, or punish them for doing so. Generally the main issue would be the to-hit penalty (unless Fighter), but, supposing a Paladin, an enemy marked by a Paladin with 20 AC (or, in other words, a Level 1 Paladin) would need to have allies with AC nearing 18 for it to be truly useful. Strikers have it at 17, roughly, but for most Leaders and Controllers, the numbers are a bit lower, reaching 15-16. Suddenly, taking 7 damage for targeting some of the party's best assets, when you have 32 HP yourself... not too bad a trade-off, eh? Besides, they generally have HP in their mid 20s if not lower, and you deal about 10 damage. The Defender doesn't get it for free - he has to make his allies bad targets, and make himself a bad target.

What? Did you think that Opportunity Attacks also robbed the DM of agency?

Congratulate yourself for noticing that other editions had attack bonuses that scaled with level. Do better next time because you didn't notice that 4e is the only where attacks, defenses, skills, and everything else scaled at exactly the same rate across the board, which cancelled each other out perfectly to the point that they might as well not be there.

I've read through the DMG, DMG2, and dungeon masters kit multiple times and I'm fairly sure that there is no such rule that monsters will always behave in the same manner regardless of their intelligence or tactics. I may be able to find a specific rule saying otherwise in a few minutes. Maybe it's possible you are mistaken?

You generally implied that through mechanics. Zombies are slow, heavy, and tend to latch onto their prey, so their attack may grab. Therefore, the best action for a zombie is to walk up front to the fighter and try to grab him. On the other hand, kobolds are sneaky, so they may be able to shift out of the way to target the backlines, or deal more damage versus enemies they're flanking. Tactical RP can be very dangerous.

>stable math across the life of a character is BAD!
>an epic level character must be as ignorant as a 1st level character about common plants because it's...
What, exactly?

>2E: +2 to +27 over 20 levels
To what? Damage or THAC0?

A creature is aware that it is marked, just like pcs.
That doesn't mean the creature is intelligent enough, or fearful enough, to radically change it's core methodology or approach.
But enough, I've had my fill of this shit bait thread.

THAC0 of a Fighter with weapon specialization and eventually a fitting magic weapon.

>the defender is only 5-10% harder to hit than all the other targets, possibly even easier to hit in the NADs
>the defender is almost as good offensively as the striker, especially if he's a fighter
If he really wants to be the first to be killed, sure, get in line. It don't matter. None of this matters.

>goblin if you move away from me, a punchman, I will punch at you
>hmm I will not move away
fucking mmorpgs

OK, found it. Right here. Monster behavior is determined by their nature and intelligence.

>to the point that they might as well not be there.
Except you don't always fight equal level enemies in 4E, stripping away those tools leaves HP and damage as the only scaling possible, and the skill system would not function as intended without the scaling.

Nah, level 1 Fighters do 1d8+4 damage (average 7,5). Level 1 Rogues do 1d4+2d6+9 damage (average 16,5). Accuracy matters a lot, too. Besides, the Fighter can generally only handle one dude at a time, for example, so he can't stop his enemies from getting to his allies.

That's the beauty of the Defender classes - providing horrible options for both sides.

There was that short period of time when Rogues loved the double sword to death because it got you rapier damage, two weapon categories that both had excellent feat support, and +1 AC for the cost of a feat.

Shouldn't the cap be 26? Warrior group THAC0 goes from 20 to 1, which is effectively +19 at level 20. +2 for specialization, +5 for toppest of magic weapons makes +26.

Its almost as if people used only the strictes nt level vs n level scaling in editions of DnD before 4e and blame 4e for forcing scaled levels.

That's right, I forgot they didn't get a THAC0 jump at level 1, although specialization is +1 hit, +2 damage, and 1/2 APR unless you're using the C&T version. That'd make it +1 to +26.

>+1 to +26
+25, when spec is only +1. +2 to +26 if you've specced into bows/x-bows and are at point blank.

You weren't allowed to use monsters of different level due to the tighter scaling. That's why minions had to be invented, because lower-level monsters could no longer serve the purpose of cannon fodder. Their attacks and defenses were too low to effectively even be there at all.

>Their attacks and defenses were too low to effectively even be there at all.
This is true of all editions but 5E. Low HD enemies as cannon fodder never worked. Minions replaced that concept with something workable that required no tracking of anything.

>everything that was legitimately a good idea in 4e is going to be backpedaled and memed forever.

>4e will never get a 4.5e that immortalizes the game in it's best light.

>everybody interested in content for 4e wants to do faggy homebrews like strike!

Making content for 4e is bloody hard, though. Making a 4.5 would require a humongous amount of people, time, money or all three.

Someone did a knockoff of 4e and it works fairly well. Stole 5e's advantage/disadvantage system, reduced the dice to d6s, and divided classes and roles so you can pick and choose, while also presenting ideas on how to play class/role combos for different genres as well.

4.5 was called Essentials.

Sauce?

It's Strike.

>Yes, even the most mindless zombie or cowardly kobold was supposed to behave optimally and know when it's marked and what that means. There was no room for acting in-character on either side of the GM screen.

why do idiots like you still lie about 4e? what's the fucking point anymore?

Stop shilling Strike!

Why does Veeky Forums keep shilling Strike!?

>There are no overtly BAD classes in 4e, though the Vampire, Assassin, and Seeker come damn close.

Don't forget Binder, which is a class with features that rely on killing or standing next to dying enemies while being a squishy as shit controller class, while somehow having less control features than it's parent class, a Striker.

Because they're very angry at a dead game.

You can literally break all of human experience down to man vs man and man vs enviroment. Stop being a faggot and enjoy things.

I'm working on some homebrew with the intent of getting really under of the hood of 4e and then using that to build something that could be described as a 4.5esq game.

However, doing things like redoing classes, or making new ones, is actually pretty damn daunting as a solo project.