Hybrid Overload

[Delicious Taffy]

During a recent search for interesting homebrew content, I happened upon this page (https://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Hybrid_(4e_Race)) for hybrid races, which immediately caught my eye. In the campaign I'm currently running, one of my players is playing a hybrid class (specifically a rogue/bard), and the mechanics struck my fancy. After thinking about it, I came up with the idea for a campaign: Every player has hybrid races and classes, with a heavy focus on duality throughout the setting. I think it would be fun to play with expectations, even if my group hasn't been playing long enough to develop many for the system itself. Most of it would likely be playing with the expectations they have for me as a DM, which I would welcome.

Of course, I don't like to introduce new content without looking into it more first, so I've started work on a hybrid Tiefling/Warforged with Shaman/Monk as his class. Boiled down, he's basically a devilish cyborg martial artist with spirit powers. On paper, this is absolutely ridiculous, which is exactly why I'd like to have an entire campaign centered around the concept. It gives plenty of room for cool combinations, while also allowing me to keep things reasonably silly.

The majority of you likely have years more experience than I have, so I'd like some feedback on these new ideas I'm having.

[MwaO]

Boiled down, he's basically a devilish cyborg martial artist with spirit powers. On paper, this is absolutely ridiculous, which is exactly why I'd like to have an entire campaign centered around the concept. It gives plenty of room for cool combinations, while also allowing me to keep things reasonably silly.

The one issue is that if you're going Shaman, you want to pick up Spirit Power and if you're going Monk, you want to fix AC with Hybrid Talent. Unarmored Agility+Hybrid Talent can kind of fix things, but that's a lot of early feats if you're starting out at 1st to just hit the baseline.

Especially if your race doesn't boost Dex

[Delicious Taffy]

After some consideration, I've decided to start the party at 6th, 8th, or 11th level, so I can throw them into more perilous situations. My current campaign is reasonably high-stakes, with enemy groups and solo creatures that can wipe the party if they're not paying attention (they're usually not, which I'm trying to remedy), but I'd like to be able to toss them into a mansion full of assassins without it naturally leading to a TPK.

[dariathalon]

It's your game, so do what you want, but my thinking is don't do it. Here's my reasoning:
1. You say your players are still fairly new to the game. Hybriding is something best left for those with some experience under their belts.
2. You say your players don't tend to pay attention. Creating a hybrid that works well can be difficult. Most of the time you just end up with a pile of garbage. So if your players don't pay close attention to details about how the character will actually work, things won't go well.
3. Starting at a higher level can work out okay, but you've thrown up some red-flags to me that say this will already be difficult for newer players to adjust to. This just cranks up those concerns one more level.

There are ways to play with expectations and dualities more easily than what you're suggesting. You want to play with expectations, give the players completely different fluff for the races. Gnomes now rule the land as tyrants. Deva's are spies sent from another plane, no-one is sure of their purpose here, but most are convinced it isn't good. Halflings are a race from high in the mountains who devote their entire lives to study of the psionic arts. Things along those lines.

You can also do the dualities thing without necessarily jumping all the way to hybrids. While I'm not a big fan of themes, they strike me as one way to give a character a second ability set, without going quite so far. I can think of several other ways to pull this theme in without going to hybrids.

I want to stress that it's not that I don't like hybrids, I'm actually playing one right now. But they are difficult to do well and a game that focuses so heavily on them will be even more difficult.

[Dimers]

The concept of "classes" is a metagame thing for almost all 4e DMs -- it's not like people in the gameworld can say "That woman is clearly a Fighter because she uses the Cleave power and has the Combat Superiority ability." So hybridization of classes is also only found in the metagame. Now, changes to the metagame may be exactly what you're looking for when you say


I think it would be fun to play with ... the expectations they have for me as a DM

But it won't be visible in play, because classes aren't in the gameworld.

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As for the linked 'brew, it needs a bit of work. Size should be made clearer. "Hybrid Power" is confusing -- most races only have one power to begin with*, so it's simultaneously impossible to actually apply sometimes and significantly more valuable than most races. The stat bonus arrangement may lead to some hybrids having a little less raw potency, but certainly not all. And even getting +1/+1/+1/+1 instead of +2/+2 is not enough of a tradeoff for getting two or three racial powers (in my opinion).

* (The exceptions being, what, humans, half-elves, dragonborn and drow? Can any other race pick from among multiple racial powers without spending feats?)

I appreciate the concept, but like a lot of material on dandwiki, it's not ready for general use.

[Tegu8788]

Some of it looks very cool, but I'd be very leary of any race getting a +4 to a stat as a racial bonus. I'd also disallow a half-elf, mul, or half-orc. Being a half half something, it get's washed out/cheesy I feel.

Then again, I'm currently playing a Human that claims he's quarter Eladrin.

I think it could be real fun though. You'd have to monitor building, and make sure they don't build unplayable characters.

I'm a hybrid lover, ask anyone here. But I'd would echo Dariathalon and Roman. They both have very good points. There are many other ways to accomplish what you want, in a much simpler way. A monk that double MCs into Shaman, using any of the many Dex/Wis races. I love complicated builds, but if players are already confused, don't make it more tricky. 4E is glorious for its reflavoring.

[MeeposFire]

A different way of doing a hybrid race is to do what I did for LFR.

I found a nation that had people that replaced parts of their body with living crystal. I thought tha sounded cool. This also coincided with me wanting to play a lazy warlord and while the shardmind but their look and aestetic did not fit well with me or what really worked in my classic minded version of LFR (living forgotten Realms). However that living crystal gave me the idea of playing a human who was covered in crystal thus mechanically being a shard mind but visually I was a human from that nation who just had WAY more crystal than anybody else. It worked very well as it gave me a unique identity in the group but did not force me to worry about if a homebrew creation was balanced and whatnot.

If you see a not so used base race you like that fits your fluff perhaps you could relfavor that to suit your race needs like I did.


Class though is a different story. A hybrid can be fun but it can also be a disaster. They are about the only "class" in the game that can be off the bat will not work well at all if you pick the wrong combo and don't build it right. This is not that common in 4e and this is one of the few true potential traps in the game class wise so be careful. Other classes that get complaints like the vampire are often due to its relatively low ceiling but those classes are still better than a poorly chosen hybrid as a vampire actually has a decently high floor power level (with a low celing as in it has real limits on how powerful it will get) whereas a poor hybrid combo will also have that low ceiling and have a much lower floor to boot. Sometimes even when the combo is fine power wise it may not be as fun to play due to its complexity.

Hybrids can be fun and powerful but they require a lot more planning than your standard class and a willingness to play with some more complexity. I am not saying don't do it but consider carefully. If you want a hybrid class you could play something like a bard with a lot of multiclass feats. Not as complicated and actually easy to make powerful and useful (just make some good choices for powers which is very standard in 4e).

[Delicious Taffy]

This all seems like solid advice to me. Are there any races or classes I should probably avoid hybridising, so we don't end up with barely-functional characters?

[Sol]

This all seems like solid advice to me. Are there any races or classes I should probably avoid hybridising, so we don't end up with barely-functional characters?

Well, Hybrid Races aren't a thing, so any really bad combination that results from any homebrew rulesets about hybrid races can itself be fixed by homebrewing a patch for that specific case.

Looking through the Hybrid Race homebrew up above, nothing jumps out at me as being particularly unusable. Hybrid Elf|Human does jump out as being notably more powerful than a normal Half-Elf, which seems silly, and is indicative of the general level of power creep involved in allowing a player to grab any two racial powers (as well as allowing half-humans to pick +2 to any stat on top of +2 from their other race). Also crazy-good? Half-Elf Elves and Half-Elf Humans, which I guess sort of make sense but are already easily representable in the game world by picking one of the three. There's enough races in the game that it's pretty easy to find mechanics that fit almost any fluff without having to homebrew.

Classes ---- anything /can/ work. A bad hybrid will always be way, way worse than a bad pure-classed character, while the best possible hybrid gains maybe 10-15%. If your players are at all new to the system, or even if they just like exploring weird, less than optimal builds, encouraging them to build hybrids is all-but-certain to substantially lower their resultant power level.

That can all be compensated for on the DM end of things, and isn't really a problem unless there's a wide power differential between your party's worst-built character and best-built character, but hybrids also tend to increase that spread.

Of particular note: Hybrid Striker|Striker is almost always bad, because it not only disallows stacking of striker features, but it (almost always) also disallows striker features from working on Basic attacks, which severely hampers the power of Opportunity Attacks and granted attacks from a leader.

Hybrid Striker|Something else can be wonderful, but if the players' focus is split between the two, will substantially lower their damage output, which will lead to enemies living for longer, which will result in the party taking more damage and encounters taking literal hours to resolve.

Hybrid Leaders only get 1 heal/encounter, so a Leader|Leader will get 2 --- but a pure leader increases to 3/enc at 16. Not insurmountable to be sure, but it's worth noting, particularly if hybrid strikers are increasing the damage taken by the party per encounter by killing things slower.

Hybrid Defenders are usually going to have to spend Hybrid Talent on getting their defenses and/or armor proficiencies back. Hybrid Defender|Defender usually doesn't work, because most forms of mark punishment don't stack (and some punishment features require a specific /kind/ of mark).

Hybrid Controllers tend to lose the least, as Control is far more about power selection than it is about class features. That said, asking a new player to cherry pick the best powers from the Wizard and Invoker power lists (while correctly staggering levels to maintain at least one of each type of power from each class) is going to work substantially less well than asking someone with years of experience playing both classes to do so. Like a 200-300% power swing between the two expected outcomes.

[Tegu8788]

I have a link in my signature, it's a spreadsheet on hybrids that can work well enough to not be a drain on the party. Of the many combinations there are, I'd say only about 20% are any good, and 5% are better than normal. I love hybrids, but they are not good for new players.

[Delicious Taffy]

After looking at the spreadsheet, I'm curious what sort of hybrids should be avoided by anyone without a death wish for their character.

[Gilphon]

Three question to ask yourself when building a Hybrid:

Which stats am I attacking from? If either class attacking with something the other has no use for, you're in trouble.
Where's my AC coming from? Often you'll have to spend a feat on this, but sometimes that won't be an option, so you'll have to rely on high dex or int, which may be a problem, depending on your answer to #1.
What am I doing with my hands? If one class wants weapon+sheild or two handed weapon, and the other wants an implement, make sure you can use Holy Symbols or Ki Foci.


So the worst possible Hybrid would be something that trips up on all three of those. Wizard|Barbarian comes to mind.

[MwaO]

So the worst possible Hybrid would be something that trips up on all three of those. Wizard|Barbarian comes to mind.

Might seem that way, but easy to make it work levels 1-30 practical play. Level 1, you take Barbarian Agility with Hybrid Talent. Now you have an 18 AC with a Wizard at 1st level. Shield as your utility at 2nd level and you're often going to be unhittable for a round. What's not to like - you're basically a super-tough Wizard who can switch up to striker when you need to do so. Genasi is an obvious racial choice and you have a reason to invest in Str for Elemental Empowerment feat.

I'm not sure I can figure out that spreadsheet, though. Rules of thumb: fix defenses, get 18s in your primary stats, make good power selections.

The worst are classes that don't have a natural defense stat mixing two primary stats of the same defense where AC comes from a different stat. Strong secondary stat for the win. Avenger|Sorcerer or Barbarian|Warlock as examples.

[MeeposFire]

Some are really powerful but have some hidden problems to deal with. A warlock|Paladin is very nasty especially if multiclassed to fighter and pick up that paragon path for fighter warlocks (something of avernus I think). It was nasty because you can get good defenses, some nice abilities, and multiple ways to punish an enemy. I think if they attacked me they would get punished several times (hellish rebuke damage, white lotus riposte, warlock encounter powers) or take a lot of damage if they did not (mark from paladin, mark from avernus, paladin encounter power).

It sounds good and it is in many ways but it does have a hidden flaw, one that is not impossible to deal with but you may not think about it. The problem is that so many of your abilities need your minor action and your range is not stuck at melee but it isn't really long range either so you may ned to move to set yourself up. It can get really difficult to set yourself up if the DM finds a way to force you to move rather than using your move action for an additional minor action.

[Tegu8788]

Everything they'd said is very true. I'll also add that, of the hybrids that work, they fall into mostly one of three groups. The double dipper, the class+, and the true blend.

The double dipper, like the barbarian|wizard, is a hybrid that can go back and forth between two different roles, giving you plenty of options in playing, but in general you're weaker than someone dedicated to a single role. In cases where you only have 2 or 3 players, this can be very useful. Or if you have a very large party, they can afford the flexibility.

The class+, like the avenger|executioner, is largely a single class doing the bare minimum to count as a hybrid. Executioner almost always goes this way. It's got one or two features/powers/feats that makes the primary class stronger. It helps buff some the the weaker classes, and is one of the easier ones to make since its focused on an established role.

The true blend is the hardest, yet strongest builds. They either focus on a shared role, fulfill both roles simultaneously, or cover an entirely different role than other parent class. It's a perfect mix of the first two types, so it's harder to make, when you can use the features of class to fulfill one role while in the same turn using a power to fulfill another role. I had a ranger|warden that would use marking and toughness to stand there, then twin strike away. Second wind combos were fun. Getting combos going, that's the trick to a true blend.


I'm not sure I can figure out that spreadsheet, though.

What's uncle Are? I know it's not perfect, far from it, but what part doesn't make sense. I broke it down by role combinations, so you can see what roles mix well. I certainly don't have any rating on them, just viability.

[MwaO]

What's uncle Are? I know it's not perfect, far from it, but what part doesn't make sense. I broke it down by role combinations, so you can see what roles mix well. I certainly don't have any rating on them, just viability.

Three problems:
I can't figure out if certain options get rated as viable or not. If no stat is listed, are you just assuming that the person takes the obvious two primary stats or it doesn't work. Examples: Barbarian|Swordmage, Monk|Sorcerer, and Artificer|Warlord.

Stats are often confusing when listed. Fighters, Paladins, and Warlords often have Wis options listed, but unless they take very specific options, Wis is usually mostly useless for them. Shamans without Dex or Int or automatic armor can't spend their hybrid talent on their Spirit Companion, making them a lot less interesting. Barbarians shouldn't really care about Con even as pure Barbarians.

Hunters aren't a legal Hybrid.

[Tegu8788]

If they don't have stats, then they don't mix well. Stats don't line up, or hands don't match well.

This is also old, so new options may have changed some of it.

Land as for Hunter, I don't know how he got in there. It's an editable document, and it's been vandalized before.

[MwaO]

If they don't have stats, then they don't mix well. Stats don't line up, or hands don't match well.

Not clear at all how you've decided stats don't line up. A lot of Int-based and Dex-based PCs line up with everything, simply because that fixes AC. Also, a few leader classes have stat-independent at-wills to use - and can then go for wild stats that would be silly on the base class, but not with the hybrid. And Ki Focus and Holy Symbols work well with Versatile Expertise for PCs who have hand issues. And many V classes such as Vampire or the various Paladins can dump the non-primary stat

As an example, a Monk|Warden who has Str/Dex and spends their hybrid talent on Warden Armor has a 19 AC. Sure, their Con and Wis are likely both set to 12, but the PC's not really doing a ton of marking a bunch of targets. He's basically a super-tough Stone Fist Monk. Either uses a Ki Focus or a one-handed weapon as implement so one item.

Or an Artificer|Warlord - starts off with a 20 Int. Sure, can't use any of the Str-based Warlord powers, but doesn't really need to worry about it because they can use Magic Weapon or grant someone an attack. This is one of the earliest 'Switch leader builds and is arguably the most famous leader build though Flameswitch is much more powerful imo(a Shaman|Warlord who is also a no-go)

Or a Vampire|Fighter who is Str/Dex and has a 12 Cha. Has a good MBA for Combat Challenge. With Martial Vampire feat, will have ridiculous numbers of surges per day. Pick up Shock Trooper as a Paragon Path and Rain of Blows and you're a full-fledged striker who happens to be an off-defender.

Etc...all of this is simply just 'fix defenses or other major issues, get 18s in primary stats, and look for good powers'

[MeeposFire]

Warlord can hybrid with almost anything. There are plenty of powers that do not require an attack roll at all or you make a basic attack (and there are a lot of ways of getting a basic attack based off of your attack stat whatever it will be). The other boost is that warlords are so good in large part (though certainly not all) due to their powers so you are gaining the best part. If your other class has strong features it is usually a win. A warlord/executioner or other striker that can use basic attacks will have striker damage while also granting extra attacks, healing, and improving positioning. Bards are almost as good as well in this regard.

[Delicious Taffy]

One of my players, as I may have said before, is currently a Bard/Rogue Pixie. At a glance, I don't know what to make of its viability. What sort of niche, if any, does a character like this fit into? Where would she shine, and what should she avoid?

Also, I've been quite taken with Swordmages and Rangers, and I'm curious how a hybrid of the two would work.

[MwaO]

One of my players, as I may have said before, is currently a Bard/Rogue Pixie. At a glance, I don't know what to make of its viability. What sort of niche, if any, does a character like this fit into? Where would she shine, and what should she avoid?

Also, I've been quite taken with Swordmages and Rangers, and I'm curious how a hybrid of the two would work.

Rogue|Bard = Dex/Cha - there are minor action Bard powers that allow one to add damage to a weapon attack - Echoing Weapon is a good one. Arrow of Warning is a phenomenal interrupt daily power. Nothing wrong here at all. You're a Rogue who took a slight ding on accuracy for better skill options, healing, and interrupt choices.

Swordmage|Ranger has some issues because Swordmage starts off with Leather and then the Hybrid AC function wants a weapon in only one hand. Here's some options:
Throw & Stab with a Dagger lets you mark a target, shift away from them, throw the dagger at the marked target, then move and MBA another target. That lets you take Swordmage AC while making you a really mobile Defender.

Pick up Ranger Hybrid Talent for Marauder Fighting Style. Two-Weapon Defense and +1 bonus to speed. With a +1 Rhythm Blade or Shielding Weapon, that's an 18 AC. MC into a Ki Focus class for access to Ki Focus to override your AC bonus. Now you can use Twin Strike.

Here's the poachable powers (http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?468783-Poachable-Powers-List-A-list-of-good-powers-to-poach-from-other-classes) list. In general, if you're ever wondering how to make a particular hybrid work, pick powers from that list.

[Yakk]

Given how easy 4e homebrew is, if I was going to make a Ranger|Swordmage hybrid I'd homebrew a TWF swordmage.

Aegis of the Dance maybe that lets you shift-swap with the target and take a hit where you must use an offhand blade. A Swordmage Warding variant that works with two offhand weapons equipped (+1 to all Defences say). Powers that grant shifts/temporary HP/shrug off status effects as kickers. Powers that do a main hand attack, then give you an OA to use with your offhand later.