The Justicar

From the players manual, Level 16 feature of the Justicar paragon path for paladins

"Just Shelter (16th level): Allies adjacent to you are immune to fear and charm effects and receive a +1 bonus to saving throws"

I have compared this to alot of paragon features of the same level and have come to the conclusion that this is just horrificly good. The thing I want to ask is...too good?

Immunity is one of the alarms that goes off in my head. I am of the opinion that players can mitigate, but should never be able to claim immunity. Its just one of those things that screws up games because (as a DM) you end up needing to deliberately design campaigns to do things other than that which players have immunity to in order to create any challenge.

Then I look at the Astral weapon just one page earlier
"Courage from on High (16th level): You gain a +2 bonus to saving throws against fear effects.".
Pretty pissy by comparison

I have ideas on how to handle but was wondering at other peoples experience and if/how they dealt with this

(p.s. please no "I think the rules are pretty clear on this" posts. They never help anyone. I come to forums for discussion, not denunciation)

In my experience, with all the movement that goes on in 4e, its unlikely that players stay adjacent to one another for very long. I think that greatly limits the potential abuse of the power.

BobTheNob said:

Immunity is one of the alarms that goes off in my head. I am of the opinion that players can mitigate, but should never be able to claim immunity. Its just one of those things that screws up games because (as a DM) you end up needing to deliberately design campaigns to do things other than that which players have immunity to in order to create any challenge.

Click to expand...

Agreed. Especially egregious when immunities creep in after the base ruleset is published.

LOL Justishear!

justiciar - Definition from the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary

I too had the same idea when I first read the Justiciar, but have yet to see someone take it. Thus, no need to nerf it yet.

I do agree with Stalker0 that having to stay adjacent is a good mitigating factor. Staying clustered up like that is so often not an option.

Yeah, and also note that the justicar himself doesn't gain these benefits. It actually seems kind of crappy to me. If you happen to be making saving throws against some effect, and it's tactically acceptable at the time, you could move adjacent to the justicar for the bonus . . . if you're expecting some charm or fear effects, you could all huddle up together . . . but that doesn't seem more powerful than other features.

If you're worried about it, make sure the monsters with charm and fear effects also have area burst powers to punish clumps of PCs. Then the players have to decide between massive damage to all of them, or succumbing to charm and/or fear.

~

My experience, playing around at 16th level, was that it was really hard to stay grouped around the Paladin at the appropriate time: you want to be next to him when the Dragon's fear aura goes off, but you want to be well away when the Dragon starts breathing on you.

It's a neat power, but I don't think it's overpowered.

In our 12 levels of gameplay, I think I've seen maybe 3 fear effects and 2 charm effects. It's almost as useless as having radiant damage resistance - at least in the heroic tier.

For a comparison, our group halfling gets +5 vs saves against fear. In heroic levels, it came into play twice.

My ranger had Sunleaf armor since level 2 with 5 radiant resist. In came into play exactly 0 times.