Proposal: Things to be nerfed

Lord Sessadore · Jun 15, 2009

I used to be in favor of houseruling problematic things. But now, looking at all the potential houserules for new players to comb through, and for character approvers to remember, I'm with those who'd rather ban than change. I just don't think it's worth the hassle of codifying and remembering all those little changes, with so many people involved.

I think there are some things that could use a banning - like reckless weapons. I'm OK with a power or a feat that lets you get a little spike of awesome (I'll be visiting the Sacrifice to Caiphon thread momentarily, don't worry), but things like reckless weapons that purely increase your awesome across the board I don't like - especially when they play into the hands of classes that are already the most awesome at whatever they emphasize.

Say what you will, it's not much fun being consistently overshadowed by one of your fellow players; especially if you have two characters of the same class, or even role, and one is clearly better at what they're both supposed to be doing. 4e is a team game, and so I think we need to look at team dynamics. If we let things get to the point where a party says "Oh no! Not him!" when one class of a certain role leaves the party, but can't be bothered when another class of the same role leaves, I think there's a problem.

I don't think we're at that point, but we should avoid getting there. Battlerage vigor, in my opinion, is an example of an element that could have that effect. I don't want people thinking this: "Who wants that regular sword & board or two-handed fighter in the party when you could have a battlerager with 1.5 times as much durability?!"

If you don't care, then you don't care. If the mechanics is just a way of resolving those random aspects of the game, and you don't care how things get done as long as they get done, that's fine. But there are a lot of people who care how well their character is doing in the team, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that (probably because I'm one of those people - if I'm not doing well, I'm not helping as much as I could be).

Oh yes, and this is of course all my humble opinion. Take with a grain of salt.

JoeNotCharles · Jun 15, 2009

Atanatotatos said:
*Uhm*
Rangers are split into two categories, and rigid ones: you are either a melee ranger or a ranged ranger, despite most powers being usable in both ways, you won't be able to do both.

Actually, I'd say that rangers are the only striker class that can do both equally well. Take the Two-Blade Fighting Style, give yourself 18 Str and 18 Dex (you can do this with 25-pt buy by buying 18 Str, 16 Dex and taking a race with +2 to Dex, or vice versa), take Defensive Mobility as your level 1 feat, and buy two swords and a bow. Now you have all the abilities of both a melee and ranged ranger, at the cost of 1 feat and not having any Wis bonus for secondary abilities. (If you really want that Wis bonus, you could take just Str and use heavy thrown weapons instead, but there aren't any that are as good as a bow.)

Moon_Goddess · Jun 15, 2009

Oooo I never thought of a throwing ranger build, that's pretty cool...

Battleax + handaxe,

2 javalins,

hmmm

Atanatotatos · Jun 15, 2009

It's really, really difficult to make it work, although theoretically possible.
You'll have to spend a lot of money on equipment, and fall short anyway. Same for feats, and sometimes for powers too. Also,balancing ability scores so that both Strenght and Dexterity are high enough without sacrificing too much the defenses and the hp is... well, I'd say impossible.
Sure it's possible to play a ranger that operates both at range and in melee, but it surely won't be an "optimal" one, so...

CaBaNa · Jun 15, 2009

I am SO excited about Arcane Power!!!

I'll be making a wizard, not a warlock... But thanks for reminding me, I still haven't started building the template.

As a wizard, Reaper's Touch is useless, as I'll never take magic missile (even if I got 4 at-wills).

Back on topic:

I think I understand what you are conveying Ata, I still disagree, but will support your decision due to how well it's been thought out.

Now that we are past that part, I agree with Lord Sessadore that an outright ban on an option is better than altering the option. Once PHB3 comes out, alterations may get crazy. (Hybrid Character Rules come out...)

Atanatotatos · Jun 15, 2009

No decision by me actually. Even though I just became a judge, judges cannot vote on their own proposals (right)?
hm... thinking back, there was Oni's proposal, too... I'll have to re-check that.

covaithe · Jun 15, 2009

Atanatotatos said:
judges cannot vote on their own proposals (right)?

Right.

covaithe · Jun 15, 2009

Although, on reflection, that rule is a bit silly. If, say, 4 out of 6 judges think something is a good idea, who cares if it was one of their ideas in the first place? Eh. It's never been an issue so far...

JoeNotCharles · Jun 15, 2009

I think the assumption is that you could be irrationally attached to your own pet ideas. Which may be true, but if it's a REALLY bad idea the other judges will overrule you.

And on the flip side, it's useful to have a vote in the times when you are able to see your own proposal in a balanced way. It would suck to propose something on a whim to see from the discussion if it's a good idea or not, become convinced it was a bad idea, and then watch it pass narrowly because you can't vote against it!

Speaking of proposing something on a whim, I was just thinking about Sacrifice to Caiphon and Reaper's Touch. If a non-warlock wants to be able to sacrifice to Caiphon to get powers back, they can just multiclass into Warlock to do it. You pay an extra feat, so the warlock is still better at this, but it's possible.

However, if a non-Shadar-Kai wanted to take a Shadar-Kai only feat (yeah, yeah, as printed Reaper's Touch isn't limited, but there are lots of others that are), then they have no recourse. So I was thinking, why not add a Bloodline feat (described in Dragon 371 and Dragon 374) for each race, which qualifies you as a member of that race for the purpose of feat and paragon path qualifications? (Feats and path abilities that build on racial abilities you don't have would be useless, of course, so this wouldn't be useful in all situations.)

Note that the two published bloodline feats (for Deva and Vampire) DON'T allow you to count as that race for prerequisites. Vampiric Heritage says, "You are considered a vampire for the purpose of effects that relate to vampires." (Not that there are any feats other than Vampire Bloodline feats that have "vampire" as a prereq...) Deva Heritage just gives you access to other feats from the Ecology of the Deva article, all of which have the prereq, "Deva or Deva Bloodline". So this is definitely not the intent of the official bloodline feats, but it seems to make sense to me.

Atanatotatos · Jun 15, 2009

I don't know if I misunderstood, but this seems a bad idea. There are some really powerful racial feats, and being able to take them from two races would definitely be too much. Can you imagine a, say, goliath fighter with access to dwarven feats? Or just take the half-elven bloodline to gain access to both human and elf feats, aside from the original race and the half-elven ones? (for a grand total of 4 races to cherry-pick from). Also, many racial feats are balanced by the fact that they're for a race suboptimal to the required class. This would obviously forego that limitation.
Not, that sounds really overpowered.