4th Edition Review

[Jester of the FoS]

Got crazy-lucky today and got to spend a few hours with early copies of the Core books.
Enough to even make a decent review and do some comparing.

Okay, first off I’ll warn that I was not impressed, so this will likely come off as a negative.
Despite my being the devil’s advocate on the boards (and as a result pro-4e) I’ve been a little jaded over the speed of the new edition and some of the changes. Mostly the seeming money grab. Now I’m not anti-money and know businesses need to keep making money, but I believe the surest way to this is quality products that scream out to be bought. I’ve been a little worries that the books would be limited to encourage future supplements and more purchases.
Unfortunately, at this time, I feel this fear has been justified.

The PHB is a decent sized book comparable in size to the current 3.5 book. Like the current a good chunk is spells, only, unlike previous editions, this time they’re not tucked in an alphabetized appendix at the end.
The book has a length section on the main rules as well as a fairly solid introduction to game play and being a good player. A very, very nice start for new players and a good introduction to the game: advice on table etiquette and the like.

The powers are strictly combat. As we’ve seen the descriptions are keyword orientated to be succinct and very limited. They’re pretty much limited to offense and don’t lend themselves to creative solutions or uses; just use the power as intended and don’t try to think. Even the utility powers are kept svelte and combat orientated.
Most powers tend to last for single turns. So multiple-round effects are rare, with the exception being offensive powers that sometimes have save effects (with the save being a randomly determined duration that continues until the save is made).
Rituals are the exception, they’re the out-of-combat spells like raise dead or alarm and vary in level. But, again, they have a very strict purpose. They are interesting as anyone seems to be able to do them (restricted by level) and they’re found in books, so suddenly the idea of rare magic rituals that open evil portals or summon gods or recharge powerful artifacts works in-game. But you need a feat to use rituals and there’s often a (financial) cost associated and the ritual needs to be found/bought so they’re almost optional. They only come into play if someone wants to drop a feat (which are more common, with one gained every couple levels on average).

But I’m mostly disappointed by the amount of content. Classes have a very, very limited number of powers. All the classes have only 4 at-will powers that they can choose their 2-3 from and when they get a new power every couple levels they get to choose from a list of 3-4. So pick your at-will power well, you’ll be using it every other round from level 1 until level 30. Warlocks are the hardest hit as their powers are based on their pact: every single fey warlock will have pretty much the exact same powers.
One of the good ideas behind 4e was that the cool things characters do would be tied to their class, not their items. So characters would be less tied to their equipment. While this is true, the sheer limited number of options still mean characters will be trying to differentiate themselves based on their few variances in feats and items. And there’s no ranks in skills to differentiate between characters. There are feats, but these seem less impressive in general.
Even feats are slim. There are god-based feats (for clerics, maybe one/god), and racial feats (so choice of race matters more from level 1-30) but there’s only three or four feats for every race and a few obvious choices are absent (sorry dragonborn fans, no wings or claws here, even though winged dragonborn pop-up in the MM).
And the much talked-about paragon paths and epic destinies… well, each class gets three or four paths (each given a paragraph or so of flavour text) and there are like four epic destinies in the entire book. FOUR! And one is wizard-specific.

Equipment is equally limited. A few key cannot-miss items and weapons but no alchemical items. There’s really one type of armour per category (cloth, leather, chain, etc) unless you count the uber-magical masterwork armours (which aren’t given much description or rules at all).

Even magical items (moved here from the DMG) are limited. A couple options at each level for armour and weapons but only a single choice for other magical items.

So WotC seems to be saying “here’s the rules. But if you want some real choices buy some other books.
“Want some more options for powers, paths and destinies? Well, buy this.
“Want some alchemical equipment? Or a choice or more than three spears, four maces, one staff, four axes, one pick, two flails, etc? Well then buy this.
“Want more than a two-page description of the planes that is less complete than the free blurbs on the website or in the preview books? Well, buy this.”

But, your say, the book is the same size as the current PHB. Maybe they just had to cut that stuff for space?
True, but they did ADD magic items to this book, something normally found in the DMG. And while the PHBs are comparable, (3e=317, 4e=317) the new DMG is much, much, much smaller (3e=320, 4e=221!). They could have easily, easily moved the 45 pages of magic items to the DMG and added dozens of new powers, weapons and feats. PLUS they could have added more magic items giving us more than 4 potions, 13 wondrous items, 9 rings, etc. But then we wouldn’t need to buy this, would we? (Hell, that book alone is larger than the DMG!! and, curiously, $5 less).

Otherwise the DMG is hard to review. It looked like a decent book for beginners with guides to types of players, building adventures, building encounters, etc. And the much vaunted treasure packets? One for each level. Yes, no optional treasure or variants for low/high magic. Just the single option for consistent (and cookie-cutter) treasure. There’s plenty of advice but NO optional rules or variants.

It has some small information on making monsters, mostly how to calculate hp and damage while advising DMs to “eyeball” special powers in the MM to figure out the level of the creature.

And like the PHB, there’s some glaring missing rules. Nothing on creating new magic items or making new powers or weapons or classes. No guidelines or behind-the-curtain looks at how things are balances. Hey, you can’t have people making their own content; then they won’t buy books.

I wish I could say more about the DMG but I spent the least time looking though it and only had so much time with the books. Really, nothing much grabbed my attention.

Finally there’s the MM. As most have seen, there are NO default monsters anymore. It’s more like the mini game (which seems to have been a HUGE influence on 4e, likely moreso than MMORPGs). There’s no longer just goblins, there’s goblin cutters or goblin sharpshooters. So, really, with no baseline you just make variants. You could have a ogre punk-bitch that was a level 1 lurker.
And despite the much vaunted “hard math and consistent numbers” there are some crazy mistakes. As has been pointed out in reviews of Keep on the Shadowfell, there’s some L3 zombie minions that are inferior in every way with L1 goblin minions.
And there’s no quick rules for making up monsters, it’s just as hard as 3e where you need to plan out the level and stats then calculate the AC/attacks based on level and stat bonuses, plus the creation of special abilities which every monster seems to have. So if I want some quick level 1 orc minions to throw at my PCs I’ll need to make them from scratch (yes, or level-down the provided L4 minions, which doesn’t seem as accurate as you reduce stats by -1 for each decrease, but you calculate the numbers based on 1/2 level so they drop in numbers twice as fast).

The table of contents/index is also ass. While the opening does list all the categories of monster (aberration, giant, orc, goblin) there’s no listing of the sub-monsters, so unless you know the creatures already you need to flip to the level index at the end. Which works well if you know what level the creatures are. So if you’re looking for the tarrasque or bugbears you just have to flip about until you find them.
And searching by environment and terrain has also been removed, so if you need that cold-based foe to inhabit your glacier be prepared to flip.

And the monsters are very limited in use. You fight them. Or have skill challenges negotiating with them. While I agree that monsters shouldn’t have out-of-combat powers cluttering up their stat-blocks there’s no sub-powers or unique rituals for most monsters (liches have a phylactery creation one, and vampires have a vamp-lord creation one). So no devil pacts or efreet wishes.
And, as people were worried about, sunlight apparently does NOT hurt vampires. And they can no longer be staked (because a stake-to-the-heart makes a lousy in-combat move and they’ll be darned if killing something happens without combat).

Most striking is the list of absent monsters. While the book contains a good 300+ monsters, with 15 or so per level except 28, 29, and 30 (you’re okay with alternating between Ancient Red Dragons and tarrasques after level 29, right?) at 288 pages (3e=319) it’s also rather small. They could have easily, easily bumped it to 300 pages and added another 12-30 monsters.

Everyone is familiar with how they bumped frost giants for this book, and metallic dragons. But what other monsters are missing. Well, I scanned my 3e MM and didn’t recall seeing 4e: dinosaurs (except ankylosaurus), metallic dragons, frost giant, Clay golems, Iron golems, Grey render, invisible stalker, lycanthropes (other than werewolf and wererat), merefolk, mohrg, nymph, rust monster, sea elves, shadows, specters, sprites (pixies, nixies, etc), and most common animals (lions, tigers, elephants, dire badgers, cat, dog, rhino, etc) although they did have bats, bears, boars, wolves, etc.

And the new, shiny archons were limited to fire and ice leaving out water, air, and earth.
And they have a tonn of new monsters that have ‘graduated’ from the MM 3, 4 and 5 or other books and, while often neat, I can’t imagine adding them into my games. And many seem like generic badass creatures meant to look 'cool' or 'fantastic' but would look outright silly if taken out of context.

It really feels like the MM is the worst offender of the “buy more books” syndrome. I can easily picture the MM2 with it’s mix of 1/3rd new monsters, 1/3rd updated monster (some unused classics and some from 3e MMs), and 1/3rd new versions of monsters. I can’t wait to see new gnolls in the MM2, the four in the MM1 just aren’t enough and only go from L5-8…

While I’m sure monsters will be some of the more frequently added creatures, 4e isn’t off to a good start. Keep on the Shadowfall apparently uses monsters right out of the MM (adding new monsters would have been a great reason to encourage people to buy the book, even after they bought the core books and didn’t need the quick-start rules and PCs).
And the D&D Mini starts (which have complete game stats on their back) seem to be crazy inaccurate and even the latest set don’t match the rules from the Core books (compare the vampire lord card to the rules in the vampire excerpt). While I’m sure they’ll update the cards with errata they don’t seem to be in any rush.

There’s also the growing problem of piracy. I really feel WotC should (and likely does) take into consideration the growing trend of book copying. With torrents and pdfs it has never been easier.
Now, 3e books were easily pirated but the good books were still must-buy. If you found a class or item or spell you liked you had to print out a page or two and couldn’t count on your memory to remember the details. And referencing laptops (or PDAs or iPod touches) was never as speedy as having the book.
Now, with powers designed to fit on an index card, piracy has become simple. Even if you have a couple powers and items from a book you can fit that information and ALL the relevant rules onto a small page.
And with the Core books all but requiring additional products, I think more people are going to be driven online just to play the game. And once a book is illegally pirated it’s not going to be bought.

[alhoon]

Jester, if this is your review, I believe I'll be disappointed.

However, I'll offer a few thoughts:
Limited character choices: A crime! Totally agree with you. The biggest let down I had so far from the reviews.

Monster making: Jester, I have made monsters for 4th edition using back engineering and the ones released. It is significantly faster than 3rd edition.
As for the rule "adjust hit rolls and AC by 1/level" it doesn't work very well and you said why. However, reducing hit rolls and AC by 1/2 levels doesn't work well either! Why? Because high level monsters start with higher ability scores mainly. I would advise adjusting hit rolls and AC by 1 for 1 level reduction, 2 for 3 level reduction, 3 for 4 level reductions.

Vampires: "Change for the name of change is never good"... Look, the bloodsuckers you mention are NOT vampires.
You can be sure that in my campaign only nosferatu will be seen outside (rarely) when the sun is up and if someone scores a 20 with a stake on a vamp, then the vamp goes down.

Efreeti wishes: Good riddance! Now I don't have to think of bizzare reasons that the minions of the Efreet lord don't have increadible stats.

Devil pacts: Want to bet that we will see them in future books?

Piracy: To make books and rules more space consuming and complicated so that they can't be pirated is hardly an argument Jester.

No Magic item creation rules: A second crime! The second biggest let down I had. How can I calculate a magic item's power as I did back in 3rd?! I always make items!

Questions:
- Are there rules for designing your own ritual? As a PC wanting to leave a legacy or as a DM?
- Can we use the old cosmology?

[Le Noir Faineant]

Jester & Al, your review gave the last push for me to decide that I won't "endorse" 4e for the forseeable future.
If I spend any money on RPG books in the forseeable future, it will either be OOP stuff or Paizo's Pathfinder.

[alhoon]

Well, I admit that I was influenced as well by Jester's review but I didn't cancel my pre-order.

I have a productive mind and I think I can save the edition by adding powers, rituals and choices.

[HuManBing]

The local RPG store owner is holding a 4E test run at the store tomorrow. As I've been running the 3.5 game there for nearly a year, there's a fair bit of industrial reasons that I attend the test run.

I'll report back from there too.

Thanks for the honest report, Jester. Hats off to you for putting aside prior history and just telling it like it is.

[Joël of the FoS]

Jester, if you can, can you describe us what a 3rd level wizard can typically do? (number of "powers" + what type, nb of spells, etc.)

Joël

[Le Noir Faineant]

Well, I admit that I was influenced as well by Jester's review but I didn't cancel my pre-order.

Pre-order? - Nerd!

SRSLY, I would to, but due to my ambition to optain a BIKE, bread is today's cake.

[Lord Soth]

Jester, if you can, can you describe us what a 3rd level wizard can typically do? (number of "powers" + what type, nb of spells, etc.)

Joël

A 1st-level Wizard has the following.

- Four Cantrips (All of which are At-Will)
- Two At-Will Spells (three if he's human)
- Encounter Spell
- Two Daily Spells in his spellbook (but can only memorize one per day)
- Three Rituals

A 2nd-level Wizard adds the following:

- Two Utility Spells in his spellbook (but can only memorize one per day)

And a 3rd-level Wizard gets the following:

- One Encounter Spell

So by third level a Wizard will know at least 15 spells and be able to cast 13 of them a day, not counting any Rituals he may have purchased in the meantime. And there's a Feat, Expanded Spellbook, which allows you to have three choices for each available Utility and Daily Spell. So if a 3rd-level Wizard had that spell he'd know 17 spells.

[Joël of the FoS]

Thanks,

I haven't followed the 4th ed discussions (lack of time, and I wanted to see the final version instead of things in the work). Is it the same list for At-Will Spells, Encounter Spell, Daily Spells and Rituals ? I guess not, but can you provide a few typical examples of each?

Joël

[Lord Soth]

Even the utility powers are kept svelte and combat orientated.

Not all. I haven't looked through all of them, but the idea behind Utility Powers is that they're useful out of combat, as well. For instance, Astral Speech gives you a +4 bonus to Diplomacy. The Rogue has a bunch which're useful out of combat, too.

But I’m mostly disappointed by the amount of content. Classes have a very, very limited number of powers. All the classes have only 4 at-will powers that they can choose their 2-3 from and when they get a new power every couple levels they get to choose from a list of 3-4.

Don't see why you're disappointed, here, as what PC's get far outstrips what most classes got in previous edition. The Fighter, for instance, got two Feats at 1st-level. Here he gets one Feat, two At-Will Powers, one Encounter Power, one Daily Power, and Combat Challenge. At 2nd-level he got a Feat. Here he gets a Feat and a Utility Power. At 3rd-level he got a Feat. Here he gets an Encounter power. And so on.

So pick your at-will power well, you’ll be using it every other round from level 1 until level 30.

Remember, you can retrain. So if you get tired of it you can switch it out.

Warlocks are the hardest hit as their powers are based on their pact: every single fey warlock will have pretty much the exact same powers.

That's a shame, but there will still be plenty of differences between Feypact Warlocks and Starpact Warlocks. Although the Warlock level-up is a bit more constrained then most other classes.

While this is true, the sheer limited number of options still mean characters will be trying to differentiate themselves based on their few variances in feats and items.

Don't quite get what you mean with "sheer limited number of options". The Rogue has 71 different abilities to choose from, discounting those gained from Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Feats and magic items are a bonus, but they're not necessary to differentiate one character of the same class from another, as there's more then enough to set them apart.

and there are like four epic destinies in the entire book. FOUR! And one is wizard-specific.

Yeah, a couple more would've been nice. I especially wanted to see the Eternal Hero.

True, but they did ADD magic items to this book, something normally found in the DMG.

I understand the reasoning for that, though. It's the players who get the most use of that, not the DM. The DMG isn't something that players should need to buy, and yet whenever I play, no matter with whom I play, I always find that most of the players have a copy of the DMG. And it's always for the same reason. Because of the magic items. Given that, magic items don't really belong in the DMG at all.

But then we wouldn’t need to buy this, would we? (Hell, that book alone is larger than the DMG!! and, curiously, $5 less).

Be fair, here. If it was all about the money, then why not put that stuff in the DMG? That'd guarantee that most players would end up buying it, instead of just DM's. The DMG would certainly be a lot higher on Amazon then #2,550 if there were magic items in it. As for the magic items, they only took up 33 pages. And in those 33 pages we got 176 magic items. That's not bad. Although I would've been fine with leaving them out, entirely, and putting them in the aformentioned magic item book.

Bear in mind, though, that the goal was to pack in as much stuff into the PHB as possible so that it's useable all on its own. And it is. Is some stuff missing? Sure (I was pretty surprised by the absence of lances). But it's got more in it then any other PHB before it. You can pretty much play with it without ever needing anything else (well, aside from the MM). That's what I call a plus.

Finally there’s the MM. As most have seen, there are NO default monsters anymore. It’s more like the mini game (which seems to have been a HUGE influence on 4e, likely moreso than MMORPGs). There’s no longer just goblins, there’s goblin cutters or goblin sharpshooters. So, really, with no baseline you just make variants. You could have a ogre punk-bitch that was a level 1 lurker.

Depends on how you define "default". The Goblin Warrior seems pretty baseline to me, as does the Goblin Cutter, despite his name. I don't see what the issue here is, though. That the monsters aren't generic enough? Don't quite understand that. Personally, I'm glad to see the end of Goblin Warriors and Orc Warriors which look remarkably similar.

The table of contents/index is also ass. While the opening does list all the categories of monster (aberration, giant, orc, goblin) there’s no listing of the sub-monsters

Yeah, I wasn't expecting to find the Hippogriff in the Griffon section.

And, as people were worried about, sunlight apparently does NOT hurt vampires. And they can no longer be staked (because a stake-to-the-heart makes a lousy in-combat move and they’ll be darned if killing something happens without combat).

Vampire Minions die from sunlight. Vampire Lords are weakened under sunlight. I don't care for it, but it's not as if it's a new thing. Plenty of fiction where older vampires can survive in sunlight. That being said, I would've liked to have seen a vampire variant to serve as an intermediary between the Vampire Spawn and Vampire Lord. One that isn't a Minion, but which can be destroyed by sunlight. On the plus side, at least that idiotic Slam Attack is gone.

They could have easily, easily bumped it to 300 pages and added another 12-30 monsters.

I would've preferred that, too. But this edition change wasn't a minor tweak of rules. It was a near complete revamp. Simply put, how much could've possibly been done? I suspect that's the case with a lot of things. Only so much could be done while still producing a balanced game. To put it another way, would you prefer more content, even if it was poorly playtested and thought out, rushed out the door in order to fill a page count?

[Lord Soth]

Thanks,

I haven't followed the 4th ed discussions (lack of time, and I wanted to see the final version instead of things in the work). Is it the same list for At-Will Spells, Encounter Spell, Daily Spells and Rituals ? I guess not, but can you provide a few typical examples of each?

Joël

Different lists for At-Will, Encounter, Daily, and Utilities. This is what the Wizard has available to him at levels 1-3.

LEVEL 1
Cantrips: Ghost Sound, Light, Mage Hand, Prestidigitation (Wizards get all four, and they all count as At-Wills)
At-Wills Spells: Cloud of Daggers, Maggic Missile, Ray of Frost, Scorching Burst, Thunderwave (you pick two, or three if you're human)
Encounter Spells: Burning Hands, Chill Strike, Force Orb, Icy Terrain, Ray of Enfeeblement (you choose one)
Daily Spells: Acid Arrow, Flaming Sphere, Freezing Cloud, Sleep (you choose two and inscribe them into your spellbook, but can only memorize one per day)
Rituals: Three Rituals of your choice (The available choices are Animal Messenger, Comprehend Language, Gentle Repose, Magic Mouth, Make Whole, Secret Page, Silence, and Tenser’s Floating Disk. You need the associated skill, but all of them having Arcana as a prerequisite save for two)

LEVEL 2
Utility Spells: Expeditious Retreat, Feather Fall, Jump, Shield (you choose two and inscribe them into your spellbook, but can only memorize one per day)

LEVEL 3
Encounter Spells: Color Spray, Fire Shroud, Icy Rays, Shock Sphere (you choose one)

At 1st-level you also choose an Implement Mastery. Either Orb of Imposition, Staff of Defense, or Wand of Accuracy. When using your implement of choice, you gain a bonus (Orbs and Wands help your spellcasting in different ways, while the Staff protects you from attack).

[Jester of the FoS]

Utility powers are NOT out of combat abilities. Most of the time (with exceptions like fly) they seem to be in-combat abilities, just ones that are not offence or attacks. Jumping powers, tumbling, healing and such seem to be the usual abilities.

Monster making: Jester, I have made monsters for 4th edition using back engineering and the ones released. It is significantly faster than 3rd edition.

Probably, but creating new abilities seems slow and hit-and-miss.
It’s probably easiest creating/updating monsters where you can just make rules for powers you know of. It’s easier to update a strahd zombie and know you just need to make it beefier then to create a brand-new skeletal undead.

As for the rule "adjust hit rolls and AC by 1/level" it doesn't work very well and you said why. However, reducing hit rolls and AC by 1/2 levels doesn't work well either! Why? Because high level monsters start with higher ability scores mainly. I would advise adjusting hit rolls and AC by 1 for 1 level reduction, 2 for 3 level reduction, 3 for 4 level reductions.

I don’t know how well it works in practice. In theory it might work well as it’s reducing it by the level-bonus, any equipment they might had, etc.
But it’s the most kludge rule I saw, since it allows hefty powers to be used on parties that might be unable to counter them.

No Magic item creation rules: A second crime! The second biggest let down I had. How can I calculate a magic item's power as I did back in 3rd?! I always make items!

Yeah, this will probably make its way into the DMG2. Again, buy more books.

Questions:
- Are there rules for designing your own ritual? As a PC wanting to leave a legacy or as a DM?
- Can we use the old cosmology?

Nope, no ritual design rules.
If you could make your own why would you need to buy the Big Book of Rituals.

The cosmology is very light. They have a handful of gods but they only seem to come into play when picking feats (or rather feat). No domains or powers or weapons. Making your own cosmology would be super-easy.

While this is true, the sheer limited number of options still mean characters will be trying to differentiate themselves based on their few variances in feats and items.

Don't quite get what you mean with "sheer limited number of options". The Rogue has 71 different abilities to choose from, discounting those gained from Paragon Paths and Epic Destinies. Feats and magic items are a bonus, but they're not necessary to differentiate one character of the same class from another, as there's more then enough to set them apart.

Yeah, but it’s a case of every time you level you have a choice of 3-4 powers. This might be a lot to 3e rogues and fighters (hrm… bonus feat or bonus feat?) but to 3e wizards when they pick a couple spells out of a list of 15-30 the list feels small.

But it’s mostly the at-will powers that irk. You pick and use half of the available powers, likely something that hits a defence not AC. Then, you use it. A lot.
I found this myself when I put a party up against a chull. The ranger spent the entire combat using the exact same ability over and over and over.
That’s going to happen a lot, you’re going to fall back on the ability that hits the weak defence and spam it.

[Jester of the FoS]

Vampires: "Change for the name of change is never good"... Look, the bloodsuckers you mention are NOT vampires.
You can be sure that in my campaign only nosferatu will be seen outside (rarely) when the sun is up and if someone scores a 20 with a stake on a vamp, then the vamp goes down.

Again, I see D&DMinis as more of an influence than Online games. Monster stats and abilities need to be small enough to squeeze onto a playing card (as seen by people who mistook the spined devil preview for mini stats).

Sunlight is problematic. Do you make them tougher, knowing they have a *huge* weakness? Or reduce their 'level' knowing the debilitating weakness is easily worked around and it's an excuse for DMs to use them to b-slap parties?
And staking is problematic to do in combat for dozens of dozens of reasons...

[Lord Soth]

Utility powers are NOT out of combat abilities. Most of the time (with exceptions like fly) they seem to be in-combat abilities, just ones that are not offence or attacks. Jumping powers, tumbling, healing and such seem to be the usual abilities.

I didn't say they were strictly out of combat abilities. There are some useful out of combat. Though yeah, most are combat oriented.

Yeah, but it’s a case of every time you level you have a choice of 3-4 powers. This might be a lot to 3e rogues and fighters (hrm… bonus feat or bonus feat?) but to 3e wizards when they pick a couple spells out of a list of 15-30 the list feels small.

True, but then again, the Wizard was due for a nerfing. And there's more to the game then just the spellcasting classes. What's better? A game in which every class has numerous interesting choices, or a game in which one-third of the classes have an immense amount of choices, another one-third has numerous choices, and the final third has a smidgeon of choices?

I found this myself when I put a party up against a chull. The ranger spent the entire combat using the exact same ability over and over and over.

That’s going to happen a lot, you’re going to fall back on the ability that hits the weak defence and spam it.

The Chuul's not really meant to be used against 1st-level PC's, anyway (for one, the combat against the Chuul lasts far longer then what's supposed to be an appropriate challenge for the PC's). Its AC is way above what's supposed to be the AC of an appropriate encounter for their level, so it's understandable why the Ranger would use the ability that gives him the greatest attack bonus. But the simple answer to this is that different situations call for different tactics. What works against the Chuul isn't what works against something else.

[Jester of the FoS]

ts AC is way above what's supposed to be the AC of an appropriate encounter for their level, so it's understandable why the Ranger would use the ability that gives him the greatest attack bonus.

Yeah, but is there ever a time you wouldn't want to do this?

"Gee, they're only goblin minions. I guess I'll just use basic attack instead of my at-will vs AC attack."

But the simple answer to this is that different situations call for different tactics.

Right, when they have low AC you do that. If they have low Reflex you spam that attack.

In some combats it may be fine, where you choose between hitting a single target or going for multiple. And sometimes you want to push targets about.
But most of the time, especially against solo monsters, you find your best chance of hitting and spam, spam, spam.

I saw this in reviews of the D&DX adventure where the players who played the warlock typically spammed eyebite over and over against the endboss, seldom doing anything else.