Sacraficial stride, or Caiphon walks behind you

Simm · 5th February 2009, 11:46 PM

Just a strange tactic I thought up for the warlock in our party, but I'm not sure it would work. This trick is probably not too powerful in a by the book campaign, but in our recent, low combat, games which average about one fight a session with the rest of the time being spent infiltrating, politicking, and investigating it has the possibility of being quite powerful.

A warlock has the encounter power otherwind stride, the feat sacrifice to Caiphon and no adjacent creatures. Otherwind stride has the target line Target: Each creature in burst. The warlock uses otherwind stride, making no attacks because there are no adjacent enemies and teleports. Having just used an encounter power with targets and not hit any of them (0 for 0) they can loses 3 hp and recover otherwind stride. Effectively, they trade hp for movement.

-Avalon- · 5th February 2009, 11:56 PM

Conversely, due to the oddity of 0... if you attack 0 creatures you either:
A: both hit and miss all of your targets, therefore negating the Caiphon ability...

or

B: Cannot hit or miss them due to their being no targets, also negating the Caiphon ability...

Either way, the teleport still goes off, the teleport is not a secondary effect hinging on the success or failure of the attack if I remember right... and if it did depend on the success of at least one, it definitely would not work lol...

Krensus · 6th February 2009, 03:59 AM

I think this comes down to the semantics of the Sacrifice to Caiphon Feat. It says "When you attack with an encounter power..." which I think is the key to your question. What exactly is an attack?

Do you have to roll a dice to have 'attacked?' The ability itself is a Warlock Attack 3, so is merely using it grounds enough to trigger Sacrifice to Caiphon even if it has no targets? I'm not really sure, I just remember HyperSmurf I think finding some discrepancies between what the PHB defined as an attack and varying answers from WOTC CustServ having to do with Wall of Fog.

In any case, I'd be tempted to rule that since you did not make any attack rolls that could have missed, you're not able to use Sacrifice, but take that with a grain of salt.

FireLance · 6th February 2009, 04:05 AM

Until someone comes up with an application that is obviously overpowered, I'm prepared to give it the benefit of the doubt and allow it*. After all, you use your standard action to do this, so you're effectively giving up a round's worth of attacks in addition to 3 hit points.

* That's my basic approach towards 4e combos: not overpowered until proven broken.

Falling Icicle · 6th February 2009, 04:59 AM

How do you "miss" an attack roll that never took place?

bganon · 6th February 2009, 10:20 PM

Yeah, this was one of the first combos people thought of when that Dragon article came out, and as I recall consensus was that it almost certainly doesn't work. The feat requires you to (a) have targets and (b) MISS all of them. It doesn't say "when you don't hit", it explicitly requires missing. Just because a power has a "target" line doesn't mean it always has "targets", there's nothing in the rules that prevents you from swinging your sword in the air; if there's nobody in the burst for Otherwind Stride you don't target anyone. No targeting means no rolls, means no misses, means no Sacrifice.

That said, as people have pointed out, it's probably not terribly overpowered to allow a standard action at-will teleport which costs 3hp... but that's a houserule.

inkmonkeys · 6th February 2009, 10:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by FireLance

* That's my basic approach towards 4e combos: not overpowered until proven broken.

I think that's the more fun philosophy at the table.

Also, Caiphon Walks Behind You is a great name for a power or a path feature. Or maybe a paragon path.

Nifft · 9th February 2009, 11:49 AM

I'd allow it.
I'd also allow it, and Reliable powers, to work when one mis-targets an Invisible foe and ends up wasting an action attacking an empty square.
Same difference.

Cheers, -- N

**Plane Sailing** · 9th February 2009, 06:45 PM

I think I probably wouldn't allow it, on the 'bag of rats' ruling on the DMG - isn't that something about you've got to have valid targets for a side effect to work?

(Then again, I'm not sure I'd be happy with 'Sacrifice to Caiphon' as it stands at the moment - it seems a cheap opportunity to reuse an encounter power?)

Cheers