Proposal: Star Pact Warlock additions from Dragon 366

Lord Sessadore · Feb 25, 2009

Well, to be fair, if the warlock is missing with their encounter power, they probably would have missed with any other power. In other words, if they rolled poorly, it doesn't matter what their power selection was, except that they might have expended an encounter or daily. Either way, they've used their standard action to essentially do nothing, so in my opinion that isn't a good argument for saying that it's not overpowered.

Also, any other class with a similar roll is going to miss and have 'wasted' their standard action as well, and if they were using an encounter power it's gone now. That doesn't change just because you're a warlock. I don't see why warlocks should be the only class that can keep trying their encounter powers - it sucks to miss with one, no matter who you are.

Oni · Feb 25, 2009

The flip side of that is, if each class couldn't do things the other classes weren't able too, they'd all be the same. The question is does Sacrifice to Caiphon break the game? As a feat that instead of making the awesome better, makes the bad suck a little less, I'm inclined to think it's presence won't break an encounter.

CaBaNa · Feb 25, 2009

agree that if the miss came from a poor roll that it would be a poor argument.

also agree that no matter your class it sucks to miss with an encounter or daily.

agree that warlocks shouldn't be the only class with this type of power.

The point I'm making is that the single miss, single use of sacrifice, retry, hit is exactly what those concerned make it out to be, slightly over powered.

then the warlock does sub-par damage compared to other strikers.

or

single miss, single use of sacrifice, retry, miss, retry, miss... is worse and worse. Being that it is more likely the warlock is targeting the wrong defense with the power, instead of rolling poorly.

The reliable keyword doesn't seem to come up for Arcane powers (so far as I've seen, though I'm no expert). That is where other classes get the retry. The only other way at heroic tier is Elven Accuracy (once per encounter).

Warlocks can target multiple defenses unlike several other classes, so using the same power on the same defense, is penalizing themselves.

I would like to point out once again, not to make the decision based on my input, as I don't play strikers. I don't think I have as thorough a knowledge as others.

covaithe · Feb 25, 2009

Suppose Fred is a level 1 warlock that has this feat (it's a feat, right? I'm not being that much of an idiot, am I?), and Barney is another warlock that took a different feat, say Speak Language. They both miss their first attack with their encounter power. Fred takes 1 damage to keep the power; Barney does not. On their next rolls, they both hit. Barney hits with an at-will power, say Eldritch blast. Fred hits with his encounter power again.

Over the course of the encounter Fred will do roughly 1d8 more damage than Barney, and probably some controller effects. He'll also take 1 more damage than Barney. If the encounter lasts four rounds, that's an average of 1 extra damage per turn, and some effects, e.g. temp HP from Vampiric embrace or whatever.

There are probably scenarios where you could get some extra damage out of it, possibly improving to as much as 2 extra damage per turn over the course of the encounter. But this is at level 1, where the HP cost is negligible. At level 3, or 7, it suddenly looks worse. The increase in avg damage per turn, I think, doesn't increase nearly as quickly as the amount of HP you sacrifice for it.

I'm inclined to think that it's good, but not broken.

Atanatotatos · Feb 26, 2009

I basically agree with covaithe.

Lord Sessadore · Feb 26, 2009

Covaithe makes a good case. *sigh* the evidence seems to be stacking on one side, doesn't it? Haha.

Dunamin · Feb 26, 2009

covaithe said:
Suppose Fred is a level 1 warlock that has this feat (it's a feat, right? I'm not being that much of an idiot, am I?), and Barney is another warlock that took a different feat, say Speak Language. They both miss their first attack with their encounter power. Fred takes 1 damage to keep the power; Barney does not. On their next rolls, they both hit. Barney hits with an at-will power, say Eldritch blast. Fred hits with his encounter power again.

Over the course of the encounter Fred will do roughly 1d8 more damage than Barney, and probably some controller effects. He'll also take 1 more damage than Barney. If the encounter lasts four rounds, that's an average of 1 extra damage per turn, and some effects, e.g. temp HP from Vampiric embrace or whatever.

There are probably scenarios where you could get some extra damage out of it, possibly improving to as much as 2 extra damage per turn over the course of the encounter. But this is at level 1, where the HP cost is negligible. At level 3, or 7, it suddenly looks worse. The increase in avg damage per turn, I think, doesn't increase nearly as quickly as the amount of HP you sacrifice for it.

I'm inclined to think that it's good, but not broken.

It may not be as bad off as I first thought, but I’m not convinced its fine as is.

Say Fred and Barney turned level 3. They both miss on encounter powers for the first two rounds, but Fred retains all powers. On the next two rounds, Barney hits with at-will powers and Fred with encounter powers.

Over the course of those rounds Barney has contributed with perhaps two times 1d10+Cha (Eldritch Blast), while Fred perhaps has dealt 3d6+Con+2d6+Int+Int (Fiery Bolt with two secondary targets) and 2d8+Con while gaining 5+Int temp hp (Vampiric Embrace). The temp hp gain of 5+Int more than outweighs the loss from the feat of 2-6, and Fred’s contribution ends up head and shoulders above Barney’s.

While the cost for retaining a power goes up with the power’s level (not the PC’s level), more powerful encounter powers are comparably more potent. It will still be better to pay 17 hp to pull off Thirsting Tendrils than settling for Eldritch Blast – you still end up with more hp and deal more damage.

covaithe · Feb 26, 2009

Dunamin said:
Say Fred and Barney turned level 3. They both miss on encounter powers for the first two rounds, but Fred retains all powers. On the next two rounds, Barney hits with at-will powers and Fred with encounter powers.

Over the course of those rounds Barney has contributed with perhaps two times 1d10+Cha (Eldritch Blast), while Fred perhaps has dealt 3d6+Con+2d6+Int+Int (Fiery Bolt with two secondary targets) and 2d8+Con while gaining 5+Int temp hp (Vampiric Embrace). The temp hp gain of 5+Int more than outweighs the loss from the feat of 2-6, and Fred’s contribution ends up head and shoulders above Barney’s.

Hmm. Good point, but I'm not sure it's fair to compare Fred's two encounter powers to Barney's two at-will powers. If Barney hits with Vampiric Embrace in round two and then goes to at-wills, how does it look? the 2d8+con and 5+int THP are even between the two of them, so we're left comparing Fred's 5d6+con+int+int to Barney's 1d10+con. Given con 18 and int 16, that's 26.5 avg vs. 9.5 avg, a difference of 17. Over the course of the encounter, that's an average of 4.25 extra damage per turn.

That's starting to look pretty good, yes, possibly excessively good. I wonder if there are other feats that can do similar things? Dwarven weapon training comes to mind; a flat +2 to damage with axes and hammers can easily turn into +4/turn for a two weapon ranger. But that has low variance, whereas if the Fred rolls max damage on his Fiery bolt, it works out to about 6.5/turn.

Sigh. I don't know. This balancing thing is hard.

Dunamin · Feb 26, 2009

So true. I agree, this thing is hard to wrap my head around…

Hmm, any other parts of the article that needs to be considered?

Lord Sessadore · Feb 26, 2009

It is tricky ... Heh, gives you an appreciation for WotC's designers, eh?

Anyway, I was thinking maybe someone should do up a proposal for the rest of the article, omitting either the feats as a whole or just Sacrifice to Caiphon, so that we can get the other parts through for people who might want to use them. I haven't found anything very contentious in the rest of the article, myself.