Reighning in twinstrike and multiple attacks.

[Flik9999]

Heya as a DM I like to have a resemblance of balance in my games and have noticed how powerful twinstrike and multiple attacks can be. This is fine for rangers to do the most damage as that is the main focus of the class. But when a ranger can deal almost double the damage a warlock does I think this is somewhat unreasonable.

So here is my fix. A ranger will still do more damage than any other striker but I feel like it will help reduce the gap between rangers and other strikers.

ITEMS
Common items only.

The biggest offenders for rangers appear to be uncommon items such as iron armbands of power and other items

MATERIAL
Books only with the exception of "Class acts" such as the avenger one which gave them "Painful Oath".
Some dragon material may be allowed with permission from the DM.

Restrict setting based classes and books to games in the setting. So no Invoker Morninglords with a dragonmark for example.

This will stop players using paragon paths which are stronger than the ones in the PHB and stop players picking extremely powerful feats that have not been tested properly.



So thoughts?

[bloodshed343]

This will make rangers much more powerful than any other striker. It will definitely make the balance worse.

Rangers can use frost cheese (from the phb) along with storm warden to reach 150 dpr.

A highly optimized warlock with a fire wind blade, iron armbands of power, elemental pact, malec-ketch janissary, frost cheese AND radiant cheese through radiant one with a morning lord ally only gets to about 100 dpr.

Rangers also have a much better nova potential baked in, where other classes need dragon magazine tricks to keep up.

The best way to keep ranger dpr from breaking the game is to rule that twin strike must target two different enemies.

Alternatively, let them roll two attacks against a single target, dealing 1w+mods if one hits or 2w+mods if both hit. Do the same for all multi-attacking powers.

Do not change minor action attacks.

Of course, this will make ranger and other martial strikers slightly weaker than warlock round per round, but with a stronger nova due to minor action attacks.

[Flik9999]

Just doing some number crunching with only common items you dont have any item bonuses to damage. Nor do you have any untyped bonuses from stuff like gloves of ice.

Twinstrike @ level 30
2D10 + 3 (Weapon Focus) +6 (Enhancement) +4 (Kensai) +5 (frost) *2
+3D8 HQ

Total 4D10+3D8+36
DPR @ 80% accuracy 56.9

Eldritch Strike
2D10+9 (Str) +3 (Weapon focus) +6 (enhancement) +6 (Armbands) +5 frost +4 Kensai
+3D6 Curse

Total 2D10+3D6+33
DPR @ 80% accuracy 43.6

[GPuzzle]

Just doing some number crunching with only common items you dont have any item bonuses to damage. Nor do you have any untyped bonuses from stuff like gloves of ice.

Twinstrike @ level 30
2D10 + 3 (Weapon Focus) +6 (Enhancement) +4 (Kensai) +5 (frost) *2
+3D8 HQ

Total 4D10+3D8+36
DPR @ 80% accuracy 56.9

Eldritch Strike
2D10+9 (Str) +3 (Weapon focus) +6 (enhancement) +6 (Armbands) +5 frost +4 Kensai
+3D6 Curse

Total 2D10+3D6+33
DPR @ 80% accuracy 43.6

Hey, look, Armbands!

You're actually looking at something like this:

2d10+4+6+5*2, which equals roughly 26 damage per roll. 52 per Twin Strike. He'll have a total of 9+3+3+2+15+1+6 or +39 to hit on his attack roll, and will crit on a 19. Which means that we end up with (44-39-1)*0,5 for a 0,2 chance to hit, 0,1 to crit, and 0,7 to normal hit. 2*[0,7*26+0,1*(21+35)]=2*(18,2+5,6)=2*23,8=47,6. Add 3d6+18 through Stormwarden and Quarry, and you have 28,5+47,6 or a grand total of 76,1 damage.

That is not good. Average Striker damage at epic level should be reaching the 90s.

That hampers everyone so much. So much. You're looking at bad Epic damage and combat that slogs through. I'm a fan of the other way of solving an imbalance problem: if something's at an amazing level, bring everything else to that same level. And people find quite interesting ways to deal with that problem.

Heather, a multi-attacking Bluff-based Rogue.

Mia, an Avenger who can hack through everything.

Rebreathers.

Battleminds with a hint of Swordmage who attack themselves in order to become Blenders.

If I could do a bit of shameless praising to myself, even a build I made recently would count (Owain - an Avenger who ends up making about 5 attacks a round late in the game through buttloads of exploitation).

The deal is, there's a lot of ways to beat your average Twin Striking Avenger out there that are just more fun. You don't need to be bound to the most effective power because you can always make something interesting just to replace it.

I mean, Heather can easily have 3 attacks a round come mid-Paragon if she's something like a Warlock|Rogue or a Sorceress|Rogue. That can easily beat your Ranger. The same applies to everyone else. Heck, Warlocks at late levels have the most damaging, reliable and useful single attack in the game!

[Flik9999]

the warlock is using armbands of basic attacks +6

[GPuzzle]

Combat still becomes boring and grindy and all slog-like. Heck, 4e barely becomes survivable if you don't dish out tons of damage, that's why the Warlord and the War Chanter are amongst the best leaders.

[Kurald Galain]

Well, Flik, the easy solution is to play with inherent bonuses (DSPG / DMG2) and don't hand out a lot of magic items, and certainly not exactly what the player requests. This shuts down most cheese builds and doesn't adversely affect balance (although characters will obviously be less powerful, they won't be unbalanced towards one another).

Plus it plays faster.

I don't see how restricting books helps the situation any (note that some of the strongest PPs are in the PHB1, such as daggermaster). I do agree that restricting out-of-setting materials helps, but that's mostly for fluff reasons, not for balance.

[Burley]

Of course, if you're the DM and you wanna reign it in, that's your prerogative.

However, consider this: In a standard party, there will have 4-5 party members. Probably 4, because, let's be serious, not everybody wants to play D&D. In either case, you'll have a Leader, a Defender, a Striker, and, maybe, a Controller. The 5th party member (and maybe the slot that's meant for a Controller) is going to, obviously, be a Leader, Defender, Striker, or Controller.

While, through optimization (which most players only do on a beginners level), Leaders, Defenders and Controllers can do a lot of damage, but the point of a Striker is to do damage. If you stop a striker from doing damage, you're going to notice your game dragging on and your players having less fun. Are you going to lower the HP of your monsters? Lower their AC?

Sure, Rangers can do a lot with multiple attacks, and other classes, usually, don't get extra attacks, but other classes don't get Sneak Attacks or Warlock Curses, either.

Unless you have multiple Strikers in your party and the non-Ranger is feeling overshadowed, don't change things too much. Otherwise, you're just shafting your player who wants to feel like a BAMF.
If you don't want them to have certain items, don't give those items to them. If you don't want like the way their build is going, pull them aside and talk to them about it.

Bottom line: CharOp is more of an exercise that a sport. We all like to find ways to do the most with the least, but players, generally, want to have a fun time as a group and they'll regulate themselves if they notice they are getting to be more powerful than they should.

[Yakk]

4e imbalances:
The big 3 of more taps:

1) Multi-tap standard actions. (Fix: damage is combined on a per-target basis, stacking rules apply as if one hit)
2) Minor and Move action attacks. (Fix: ban. Or, ban static damage modifiers on such attacks. Or, ban many static damage effects, or make them 1/round)
3) Off-turn attacks. (Fix: See minor action. Or, have it consume your next turn's standard action, and boost them)

4) Crit fishing. Crit chance times crit damage can leverage to quadratic output (together with more taps for cubic). Some of the above tap fixes do not deal with this. (Fix: uncertain. Lots of banning I suppose)

5) Accuracy. The yield from accuracy boosts dominates over most other boosts, and leads DMs to use over-leveled foes which are punitive towards characters who don't massively invest in accuracy. (Fix: presumed competence: your accuracy is Level+3+Proficiency. Expertise adds another +1, and a magic weapon another +1, combat advantage another +2. All other modifiers banned.)

6) Auto damage stacking. (Most of these have been fixed, many of the rest remain strong)

7) Charge Cheese. (Fix: they don't stack with each other)

8) Vulnerability cheese (Fixes: 1/round per attacker you can apply vulnerability?)

9) Ping pong cheese. Have something enter/leave/enter/leave a damage zone. (Fix: such triggers go off at most 1/round per target)

However, after doing the above, what happens is damage becomes anemic.

a) Encounter and Daily "high damage" powers peter off in effectiveness at higher levels. At level 1, a 2[W] power is a large damage boost (let alone a 3[W]!) and will bloody a level appropriate foe: at level 27, a 4[W] or 5[W] encounter power is in no danger of bloodying a foe, and deals barely more damage than a base attack. Higher damage is a trap: taps deal way more damage. (Fix: Scale damage dice way up, esp on encounter/daily powers)

b) HP and damage becomes flat at higher levels. A level 4 foe has twice the HP of a level 1 foe. A level 33 foe has 9% more HP than a level 30 foe. (Fix: dunno, really. Other than an exponential HP rework of system. Or having two levels for a monster -- one for HP/damage, one for attacks/defences. A level 4/4 creature at level 1 is similar to a level 33/63 against a level 30 character. This is somewhat handled by elites, but only somewhat.)

[Kaiisaxo]

Heya as a DM I like to have a resemblance of balance in my games and have noticed how powerful twinstrike and multiple attacks can be. This is fine for rangers to do the most damage as that is the main focus of the class. But when a ranger can deal almost double the damage a warlock does I think this is somewhat unreasonable.

So here is my fix. A ranger will still do more damage than any other striker but I feel like it will help reduce the gap between rangers and other strikers.

ITEMS
Common items only.

The biggest offenders for rangers appear to be uncommon items such as iron armbands of power and other items

MATERIAL
Books only with the exception of "Class acts" such as the avenger one which gave them "Painful Oath".
Some dragon material may be allowed with permission from the DM.

Restrict setting based classes and books to games in the setting. So no Invoker Morninglords with a dragonmark for example.

This will stop players using paragon paths which are stronger than the ones in the PHB and stop players picking extremely powerful feats that have not been tested properly.



So thoughts?

The problem is Twinstrike. If you limit too much stacking bonuses, you'll end up hurting the other strikers more than rangers, and you risk widening the gap.

I was thinking on limiting twin strike so it was more difficult to stack attack after attack. SOmething like



Twin strike
ranger attack 1

At-Will, martial, weapon

Standard Action

Range: Melee or ranged weapon

Requirement: wielding two melee weapons or a ranged weapon

Target: one creature

Attack: Strength (melee) or Dexterity (ranged) vs. AC

Hit: "1[W] damage. And you can make the following attack using your off hand weapon (melee) or the same weapon (ranged


Minor Action:
Attack: Strength (melee) or Dexterity (ranged) vs. AC
Range: Melee or ranged weapon
Target: one creature
Hit: "1[W] damage.

Increase both damages to 2[W] at 21st level.

In this way, ranger need to use both standard and minor actions to multiattack, and only if the first one hits. This also means competition with minor action encounter powers, so they no longer can do: Standard: Daily with two atacks, AP: Twin strike, minor: encounter with off-hand attack. but instead now have to chose wisely so they can nova less. More important, all other ranger at-wills become somewhat more valuable.

Just thinking though.

[Burley]

In this way, ranger need to use both standard and minor actions to multiattack, and only if the first one hits. This also means competition with minor action encounter powers, so they no longer can do: Standard: Daily with two atacks, AP: Twin strike, minor: encounter with off-hand attack. but instead now have to chose wisely so they can nova less. More important, all other ranger at-wills become somewhat more valuable.

Just thinking though.

The problem with your solution: Using up the minor action takes the Ranger's Hunter's Quarry away. If you want to have the secondary attack only activate if the first hits, that's one thing. But, if you remove the striker ability, you're limiting the Ranger from doing what he's supposed to do: Strike.

[masteraleph]

The problem with your solution: Using up the minor action takes the Ranger's Hunter's Quarry away. If you want to have the secondary attack only activate if the first hits, that's one thing. But, if you remove the striker ability, you're limiting the Ranger from doing what he's supposed to do: Strike.

Eh, true, but the Ranger's real striker feature is Twin Strike anyways.

It's a nice solution. I think the other solution is to mandate that they be different enemies.

[Yakk]

Twin Strike:
[M]+[O]+Stat on a single target (if both attack rolls hit)
[W]+Stat on different targets

This gives a non-optimized ranger a twin strike that is as strong, or stronger than the baseline one. An optimized ranger gets a twin strike that is worse than the baseline one.

Minor action attacks you can either ban, or halve their damage, or ban static damage modifiers on them.

Out-of-turn attack powers can be treated like minor action powers, or you could have them consume your next turn's standard action and buff them.

Personally, I like the idea that immediate actions cost you your next turn's standard action, but they also get serious buffs. It makes the "no, stop, I'm doing something" worth it. It does cost extra state, but hey, what ya gonna do.

As an example, the ranger power that interrupts a hit and mostly makes it miss: now is two attacks (!) (M+O if melee, or R+R if ranged), each of which is a separate damage expression (!), maybe for an extra [W]. The target suffers the penalty if only one hits, and simply misses if both hit (this allows you to make a 20 miss).

This is not as good as the original in the hands of an optimizer, but as strong or stronger prior to optimization.

[Beta Centauri]

Try creating encounters that benefit from high damage, but can't entirely be defeated by it. Lots of stories, movies and shows provide examples of situations that can't just be blasted through. Lots of video games do the same thing. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is a good example; sure, you can stand off and blast with snipers, but that's not going to help you defuse a bomb, or save civilians.

So, maybe the ranger is dropping enemies left and right, but meanwhile the warlock is slipping in with misty step and teleports from the cursed foes the ranger is dropping, and stopping the eldritch device that's about to go off.

Use more minions to absorb striker damage. This affects the warlock too, but the warlock gets to curse the minions.

Finally, talk to the players. Mention your concerns and ask if the ranger is willing to tone it down. He almost certainly doesn't have to be doing that much damage in order to win encounters, and closer fights can be fun. If dragging fights are a concern, there are lots of other solutions to that besides higher damage. It was never the intent of the game to make it all about damage.

[Tegu8788]

Here's a different option for a twin striker that's overshadowing other players. Have an enemy that's able to heal as a standard action. Magic or regeneration, the enemy doesn't die which keeps the ranger busy, but the high damage of the ranger is able to keep the baddy focused on self-healing instead of dealing the monster's own high damage potential.

[Sol]

I'm pretty adamantly against any mechanical "fix" to this "problem."

It's true that multi-attacking ended up being substantially better than the 4e developers expected it to, but it's only one of four equally viable mechanical routes to striker optimization. If a player is optimizing multiattacking enough that it's a problem, and you nerf him, he will be angry and sooner or later adopt one of the other routes to damage optimization.

The real problem is the discrepancy between his optimization level and that of your other strikers (if you have other strikers). This isn't a mechanical issue, because any class can be optimized sufficiently to meet striker baselines. This is a social issue, and it should be handled by discussing with all players and agreeing on a desired optimization level. If the player playing the ranger desires an abnormally high optimization level for the party, next time ask him to start off with a weaker base, like a seeker or a bladesinger, or else put him in a leader or defender role where his optimization will be less in the form of gigantic damage numbers, so will be less likely to incite jealousy.

If, no matter what you do, the other players will still struggle to keep up, it is better to bring them up closer to his level than it is to bring him down several notches.

That way the other players get to think, "that's badass!" Instead of the problem player thinking, "you're a ****."

[Beta Centauri]

If a player is optimizing multiattacking enough that it's a problem, and you nerf him, he will be angry and sooner or later adopt one of the other routes to damage optimization. Hear, hear. Talk to the player, find out if they'd be willing to tone it down and if not why not.

[Yakk]

Sol, what are the 4 routes to damage optimization?

Multi-tap zone ping-pong, multi-tap attacks, charge cheese, and ? crit maybe ?

I'd consider crit fishing to be a special version of multi-tap attacks, as it just replaces a linear factor (damage bonus) with a quadratic (damage on crit and crit chance). Getting more taps is still key.

I suppose some of the proposed changes would impact static damage bonuses more than crit damage and chances.

Or you could be thinking about a different set of 4. I'm curious. Vulnerability exploitation? Again, seems like a sub-category of multi-tap.

...

Part of my goal when doing these kind of changes is to move power from the currently optimal to the currently suboptimal, from the "cheese" to the "big hit power". The "big hit power" are rarely worth using in 4e.

Besides charge cheese, the other 3 kinds I referred to run into the problem that they boost damage per round far more than they boost damage per second. Which means that (to keep things challenging) we need to boost enemy HP totals, which results in long grindy combats (in real life time).

Charge cheese at least is quick to evaluate. I don't consider it a sub category of multi-tap because usually you cannot reliably charge more than once in a round. (it may also not qualify as a kind of high end optimization because of that, lack of a multiplier).

[Sol]

Sol, what are the 4 routes to damage optimization?

You can reduce a bunch of them down to "multi-tap," where "tap" is a damage instance, but multiple attack powers or rolls against a single target aren't strictly necessary.

In my head, the set of 4 is:


maximize the number of attacks you make per round (multi-attacking or huge area multi-targeting)
maximize the number of damage instances per attack you make (zone abuse, firewind blade, even something like the Generator)
maximize damage done with a single attack on your turn (generally charging)
maximize chance of and damage done on a critical hit


It's absolutely true that all of these benefit from cross-optimizing the others, but they're often somewhat mutually exclusive innately.

Charge OP often means you only expect to make one attack on your turn.

Zone abuse is often multi-target rather than multi-attack dependent, though can work with both, it's just rarer (especially these days after KAM was nerfed) for multi-attack strikers to use build space to bake in forced movement.

The most ludicrously potent critical hit riders come from Invoker feats, which aren't compatible with multi-attack powers, while the best multi-attackers (rangers) have somewhat limited access to anything impressive happening on a crit, and the class with the best crit chance (Avenger) has somewhat limited access to multi-attacks.

Vulnerability abuse can trend in multiple directions, as it tends to work well in conjunction with multi-attacking, multi-tapping, and multi-targeting equally well.

It would be wonderful if the big 7[W] barbarian and powers were less ****ty in comparison to howling strike, but so, so many things would have to change to make that the case, and an optimized howling strike damage roll is no less complicated to compute than two twin strike attacks, by the time you have to keep track of vulnerability states and firewind blade/radiant one eligibility.

[Sartharina]

It's true that multi-attacking ended up being substantially better than the 4e developers expected it to, but it's only one of four equally viable mechanical routes to striker optimization. If a player is optimizing multiattacking enough that it's a problem, and you nerf him, he will be angry and sooner or later adopt one of the other routes to damage optimization. Except, ideally, the other routes of damage would leave him in the same optimization spot as sticking with his nerfed multiattacking. The purpose of 'reigning in' options is to bring them in line with other options, to provide more viable playstyles.

It's essentially an attempt to reign in the optimization ceiling of the game to allow options at the optimization floor be viable again (And often raise the optimization floor as well)

[GPuzzle]

Then the deal here is finding a way not to nerf stuff like Twin Strike, but rather buff the other options.

[Sartharina]

Then the deal here is finding a way not to nerf stuff like Twin Strike, but rather buff the other options.Not necessarily. It just depends on what's balanced against the level. Buffing things so every option hits above its weight is a different imbalance. The ideal is to pull the optimization floor and ceiling closer together.

[masteraleph]

Not necessarily. It just depends on what's balanced against the level. Buffing things so every option hits above its weight is a different imbalance. The ideal is to pull the optimization floor and ceiling closer together.

The problem is that a) strikers should be doing a lot more damage than other characters, and b) combats should be ending in 4-5 rounds. If you have a striker and 4 other characters vs. 5 standard enemies, that means the striker more or less killing two of them and the other 4 killing 3 of them. Work through the math- either you need to nerf multiattacks AND monster hit points and defenses (especially in upper levels), or you need to up the damage for all non-multiattacks to make it competitive.

[Yakk]

In my head, the set of 4 is:

* maximize the number of attacks you make per round (multi-attacking or huge area multi-targeting)
Multi-attacking is usually better here, as damage over many targets means they stay alive longer. I consider mass-area attacks "fair game", so long as the attacks are doing "modest" damage per creature (ie, not killing everyone hit, or not even bloodying everyone hit).

* maximize the number of damage instances per attack you make (zone abuse, firewind blade, even something like the Generator)
"Stacking rules apply on a per round basis per target for damage". (which, all by itself, makes multi-tap spam go away). "Explicit damage in a power, like 2[W]+Str, applies, but any bonuses (like implement, vulnerability, etc) stack on a per-round basis. Resistance reduction via vulnerability is not per-round, and neither is resistance."

* maximize damage done with a single attack on your turn (generally charging)
"You can add one charge-triggered bonus die a given charge." Static bonuses are less of a problem.

maximize chance of and damage done on a critical hit
"You can apply critical hit effects and damage on a target at most once per round".

That covers most of it.

We then take a step back, and rework powers.

A simple transformation on powers is #dice_after = 2*(#dice before-1)+1. Ie, all dice in excess of the first are doubled. (This might be too strong in heroic, and not strong enough in epic.)

For at-will powers, the damage bump at level 21 is moved down to level 11, and a second (equal) damage bump occurs at level 21. (this is not redoubled).

So most at-will powers deal [W] in heroic, 2[W] in paragon, and 3[W] in epic.

Some work on the "striker damage bonuses" should also be done, making them scale faster. Probably just have dice bump every 5 levels instead of every 10.

Possibly revert some nerfs done to multi-tap powers along the way (as they where nerfed assuming damage bonus stacking would make them broken).

AOE powers remain overly strong. In order to speed up play, I might force one attack roll and one damage roll for them. Maybe to avoid crit explosion (and the overpowering reroll/die substitution abilities), when you roll a crit with it, you pick one target to crit. Then continue rolling until you fail to crit, and then you hit everyone else.

There are probably high end optimization options left by the above, but they will at least be somewhat different than the "look up on the internet" ones. And naive power selection ("I want a power that hits hard!") no longer results in a completely ineffective character.

9[W] -> 17[W]. With 2d6B1 weapon that is 8*17=136 damage from [W] dice.

Multi tap crit fishing remains viable. Even one crit/round can be enough to leverage high damage output (if not obscene) (the old twin strike, avenger oath, daggermaster for 50% crit chance). But it doesn't diverge -- the most you get is 1 crit/round.

Might be worth considering.

The annoying part is tracking what damage you have applied to what targets this round for stacking purposes.