Proposal - Martial Power

garyh · Feb 18, 2009

It does require a non-trivial attention to your Wisdom, though, which the other feats don't require to be effective. If you're pumping the stat tied to your weapon, you may not have much left to devote to Wisdom.

Atanatotatos · Feb 18, 2009

Who cares? You're doing more damage than any other class in the game EXCEPT a stormwarden and you're not even a striker. Furthermore, you're saying this about marked scourge, but not about the Battlerager class feature, which is completely dependant from Constitution and certainly impacts less on the game.

garyh · Feb 18, 2009

If you care about maximizing Marked Scourge to get to 26 wisdom, like your example, you should be rewarded. And that +8 is up against the striker bonus damage - the 5d8 of a rogue or the 3d8 of a ranger or 3d6 or a warlock.

JoeNotCharles · Feb 18, 2009

Atanatotatos said:
You can take all of them actually because they all stack. You can have a +8 wisdom modifier at epic level if you take demigod without ruining your build. With that it's +8 dmg on that second attack; with Pit fighter that makes 16; isn't it a bit much however you look at it?

At epic level? No, I don't think so. I'm more worried about the balance at Heroic and Paragon levels.

I think it's simply better than any other dmg-bonus feats.

Draconic Arrogance gives you Str in bonus damage when you push an enemy or knock them prone. That doesn't into effect as often, but considering Tide of Iron and other common sources of pushes it's not exactly rare. And it's a Fighter primary stat, so you don't need to pump anything. (Also in MP, so maybe that's worth debating too?)

EDIT: the only other comparable feat I see at Paragon level is Scimitar Dance from the PHB, which does Dex damage on a miss. That's more common than Draconic Arrogance, I'd say, and again it's a Fighter basic power, but it explicitly doesn't stack with anything, which is the worry here. I didn't check Heroic feats because I assume there's nothing that good down there, or Epic feats because I think it's acceptable at that level.

Atanatotatos · Feb 18, 2009

They shouldn't be comparable, because we're talking about a fighter build, not a striker's. Also if you want to see math, look on the wotc optimization board for a comparison between a tempest fighter/pit fighter with marked scourge and anything else.

Don Incognito · Feb 18, 2009

Battlerage Vigor is (as far as I'm concerned) broken. With a capital B. And a capital everything else, for that matter. Especially at heroic tier, Battlerage Fighters are nigh-unkillable. BRV essentially forces the DM to use mostly ranged attackers. Sure, it's fun for the person playing the fighter, but its unfun for the DM and unfun for everyone else in the party. I've seen it in play, I've read about other people's experiences, and let me tell you this; BRV is BAD FOR THE GAME.

Letting one person be a super-powered killing machine does not a good game make.

Oni · Feb 18, 2009

IMHO the battlerager does seems to stand head and shoulders above the other options, especially a dwarf with the dwarf stoneblood feat. That's a monumental amount of staying power when you compare it against something like the Paladin's Bolstering Strike. All in all it seems a lot more attactive than a +1 to hit.

The benefits are most keenly felt at heroic too, which is going to be the dominant level of play for L4W for quite a while I'd imagine.

I also have issue with Marked Scourge, the ability to stack even more static bonuses on multiple attacks seems troublesome.

Lord Sessadore · Feb 19, 2009

On BRV: I am totally on the "it's stupidly overpowered" side. Looking purely at the temp hp, it basically gives you DR equal to your Con modifier against melee opponents. Minions are nearly completely ineffective.

If the bonus were 1/round ... maybe. But definitely not as written, it's too much compared to +1 to hit.

On Marked Scourge: I don't like it either. If Pit Fighter didn't exist, or if they were mutually exclusive, maybe. But with the potential for them to stack, I think that's too much. If you have a fighter with a good Wis who pumps it, at level 11 they'll be adding +8 to nearly every attack. Especially with the Tempest.

That said, I'm a fan of Martial Power in the general sense

I think the Tempest by itself should be OK without double weapons; the one difficulty I can see with that is Two-Blade Warrior, or whatever it's called. The ranger multiclass feat that lets you wield one-handed weapons in your off hand. Granted, the Tempest wouldn't get their off-hand damage bonus, but ... I dunno. I'd have to take a better look at it.

covaithe · Feb 19, 2009

Whee, I can see that this will be a fun one. I'm way behind on my reading to follow these arguments, and frankly I'm gonna concentrate on FRPG first. But it seems like there are plenty of people up on it, so...

Mostly I'm just posting to subscribe.