The Glade 4.0

*sigh*

Guys I have been gaming with want to try it out. Can anyone give me a quick run down on the priest/cleric class before I agree to anything?

_________________
Raell Kromwell

There are four major roles that each class breaks down into. Defender (tanks), Striker (DPS), Controller (AOEs, stuns, dazes, holds), and Leader (buffs, strategy, heals). The cleric is defined as a Leader.

The way healing works in 4E is that everyone has an allotment of "healing surges" per day. Some classes more than others (the warrior gets a boatload). A healing surge heals approximately 25% of your health, plus any extra (and clerics give lots of extra). The thing about healing surges is that only certain things can allow a player to expend one (they can voluntarily do so only once per fight, and can spend as many as they want voluntarily outside of combat).

So instead of the cleric being a constant heal bot, most of his powers are ones with the side effect of allowing others to expend a healing surge (plus some extra health). Many are spells that include attacks, so you're not just sitting back and doing nothing but healing, you're in the thick of things.

Because every player has a limited amount of healing surges per day, and because most of your healing spells are not multi-player heals (most target only one player) you have to think about when to use your heals and who to give them to (but the player can always choose not to expend a healing surge as well). Some spells in particular seem like they should target multiple players, but they don't (one states that it's a "close burst" of several squares.... but it still only heals one player. the close burst allows it to not provoke attacks of opportunity).

4E is a lot more about strategy, and Leaders are classes that really enable their group to employ better strategy. They heal, they buff, they can literally position friends and enemies exactly where they want on the battlefield (Warlord). I think the cleric is a lot more fun to play in 4E because the role is a lot more active and involved and enables you to help be your party's tactician (though you don't have to be).

The game is a lot more fun when your party is working together as a team (instead of trying to be spotlight hogs or loners... 4E tolerates those types a lot less than previous editions) and when your GM is really using the same strategy to the enemies' advantage. When the GM is his doing his job correctly, the party will want to do each of their respective jobs correctly. And then everything gels, and it is glorious.

Only when the GM kinda is wishy-washy and also does not like to use strategy to his advantage... and/or if you get players in the party who really aren't team players... then 4E begins to feel like it's not all that great.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Clerics (well, leaders in general) can heal without being healbots.

Leaders can be very tactically interesting classes, if you choose to be. Clerics tend towards the more straightforward, Warlords and Bards can be very effective group enabling force multipliers.

I liked 4th edition a lot. I really wish I were in a position to be a player for it, though.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

And, as numbuk indirectly points out, 4e is primarily a tactical combat game. Any other elements are distantly secondary.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Her opinion. Just like my opinion that 3.5 is completely broken beyond repair.

I've had more fun roleplaying and doing non-combat things in 4th than I've had in a long time.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I think we might want to sit this one out, General Disarray.

_________________

I'd suggest staying away from 4th edition. It is a horrible, horrible game. Instead, you should play Star Wars: Saga Edition. Easily the best table top gaming system I've played(well, at least with any regularity, I do really like 4th edition Shadowrun, but I haven't had a whole lot of experience with it).

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

I sortof agree. I feel Saga is an excellent concept, and the rules really do capture the feel of star wars. It does seem to lack polish, though. It feels like a beta test in which several of the developers didn't even talk to each other about how they thought the rules would work before they developed content based on them. (There's even a major argument between Gary Sarli and Rodney Thompson on the WotC forums about one particular mechanic...each developer took a different side in a forum argument by players.) That said, I love the game.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Actually, the current incarnation of Star Wars has a host of problems, most of them brought on in the same fashion as third edition D&D - much of the prestige classes don't really pay much attention to working in conjunction with older rules. In addition, the system is very much the "beta" for fourth edition D&D, and it shows. The rules have serious issues.

To their credit, the designers have made every attempt to preserve the feel of both the original movies and the expanded universe from the comics. The books are clearly written by Star Wars fans, and they do a remarkable job of presenting an actual setting. They're also very good at portraying the different eras in the Star Wars timeline.

However, this is not a Star Wars thread, so I won't derail it any further.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

Wait.... wha huh?

Saga Edition was the framework for 4E.

*boggle*

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I'm not sure how you get that impression. They are nothing alike. Tome of Battle is more the framework of 4th edition, with the combat maneuvers and such.

_________________
Los Angeles Kings 2014 Stanley Cup Champions

"I love this **** team right here."
-Jonathan Quick

Raltar: Na. ToB and Saga edition are much alike, actually, but they're not like 4th edition. Jedi = Martial Adepts.

Numbuk: 4th Edition did use a lot of Saga's ideas (for instance, turning saves into difficulty targets like armor class in d20.) However, they completely elimited much of what makes saga a great system. One example-the free (and encouraged!) multiclassing, the complete customizability, the flexibility to make any type of character into any role, and do it well, etc. 4e just abandoned that and pigeonholed every class into one role, and gave them very little flexibility with regard to "build." In fact, with a few exceptions, your "build" in 4e makes no difference at all. You can randomly pick things and almost end up with the same effectiveness as if you carefully plan it out.

When I first read Saga I was actually looking forward to 4e, i figured they were going in that direction. But then they crippled the system. Saga is far more like d20 than it is like 4e. You still have multiclassing and prestige classes. You still have differing hit dice and BABs. Your basic combat mechanic is still the same as d20...force powers (like Maneuvers in ToB) are "per encounter," but other than that it's still the exact same system.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

Saga Edition has no daily powers, but it has a slew of encounter powers. It also, like 4th edition, fails to address how you handle the recovery of encounter powers used outside of combat encounters. Now, 4th edition manages to circumvent this by simply not having any encounter powers that are usable outside of combat. Prior to Saga Edition, the encounter power was largely limited to fighter super moves from the Tome of Battle. It was Saga Edition where they decided to beta test a system which was largely defined by encounter-based powers. Daily powers have existed in D&D since the 70s.

The departure from skill ranks, and simply having "skill training" grant a flat +5 to the skill roll was also beta tested in Saga edition. They also found that skill focus granting another +5 was too overpowered, and moved back to the +3 granted by 3rd edition.

Moving resistance to a flat "defense" that more resembles AC was beta tested in Saga Edition.

Healing surges were beta tested in Saga Edition, where they are called "second wind."

There's more, if we would like to run a full comparison.

_________________
Buckle your pants or they might fall down.

4th edition will never satisfy people who believe that "building" a character for combat is more fun that playing a character in combat. As was alluded, there's very little you can do to make yourself more or less effective overall by the power selections you take. That's actually a strength of the system that speaks of balance, rather than a deficiency, in my book.

The *system* of the game is definitely all about combat, with some rules thrown on to govern some non-combat encounters that get structured sort of like combat in loose terms. But I've never understood why people view that as a negative -- if you even try to structure role-play, you destroy it or butcher it. There's nothing in 4th edition to *stop* you from role-playing, it simply assumes that you're not looking to the rulebooks to tell you how. I find the class descriptions and paragon paths to be really neat material to draw inspiration from, and I think that's what it should be there for.

I will concede that the monster manual is a bit lifeless and devoid of "flavor." It could certainly have benefitted from some more detail in its descriptions of monsters' habits, appearance, and "ecology;" 3.x spoiled us in that regard, I think.

Mechanically, 4th is more robust and balanced more soundly than Saga is, though Saga isn't bad by any stretch of the imagination -- just rougher, and there's a disappointing balance gap when it comes to skills that get to test against defenses due to skill focus.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

I was under the impression, from either DMG or PHB1, that if one burned an Encounter power outside of combat, it should probably come back in about 3-5 minutes of non-combat.

_________________


Grenade 3 Sports Drink. It's fire in the hole.. Your hole!

Yeah, encounter powers are refreshed after a short rest, which is 5 minutes of little-to-no exertion.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

Saga and ToB have similar refresh mechanics.



Depends what you want out of combat. You're talking about the difference between tactical gaming and strategic gaming. Choosing the right actions in combat are at the tactical level, but planning ahead to ensure combat is going to be in your favor is at the strategic level. I like strategic thinking; having an overall plan for how to be effective in general. If I strategically think things out well enough, the tactics work themselves out with far less to worry about tactics, and I can roleplay combat rather than be forced to struggle with tactics to survive. Building a character in 3.5 or SW Saga Editions is fun in itself, even outside of play, but I don't get much into the tactical end of things, I just don't care that much.

_________________
Well Ali Baba had them forty thieves, Scheherezade had a thousand tales
But master you in luck 'cause up your sleeves you got a brand of magic never fails...
...Mister Aladdin, sir, What will your pleasure be?
Let me take your order, Jot it down -You ain't never had a friend like me
█ ♣ █

I've been running a 4E since it came out, and my players love it. Its also AMAZING to run from a DM side

_________________

I had no major problems with the 4e rules except for a couple things. My main issue was the "feel" of the game: while it felt more like D&D to me than 3.x, it also gave no feeling of achievement.

_________________
“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

That may be my fault. I make no bones about my relative noviceness as a DM.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades

Penny Arcade had podcasts of them doing 4th Ed. with an official WotC DM.

The 2nd batch had special guest star Wil Wheaton.

I highly recommend it for anyone trying to puzzle out 4th Ed. and how it would work from a playability standpoint.

_________________
Once, I was a ranger
Then, I was a warlock
And a mage
And a paladin
Now, I seek to be myself

They are releasing a third batch every week currently, with the first coming out last week. Wil Wheaton is also back.

_________________
Les Zombis et les Loups-Garous!

I want D&D saga edition. I find Saga to be my favorite game system I have ever played. It's cinematic, simple, and doesn't play like an MMO.

_________________


It feels like all the people who want limited government really just want government limited to Republicans.
---The Daily Show

I've never even understood what this is supposed to mean.

_________________
"Aaaah! Emotions are weird!" - Amdee
"... Mirrorshades prevent the forces of normalcy from realizing that one is crazed and possibly dangerous. They are the symbol of the sun-staring visionary, the biker, the rocker, the policeman, and similar outlaws." - Bruce Sterling, preface to Mirrorshades