Avengers Assemble! -- er, Essentials

Dungeons & Dragons Roleplaying Game Official Home Page - Article (Avenger Essentials)

Distant Vengeance makes my Wizard start feeling religious all of a sudden. I mean, Magic Missile (with feat & item support) was already decent.

Painful Oath is also spiffy for the multiclasser who otherwise might not have a whole lot of Radiant or Necrotic powers.

From a multiclassing perspective, Oath of Urgency is sweeet. Of course you need to get access to Channel Divinity somehow, but that's solved in some cases, like that Bard paragon path, or a Wisdom-based Cleric or Invoker.

Cheers, -- N

I accedently posted this in general the 1st time.

Power creep ahoy. The feats are what matters here, so I'll get the two big ones right out of the way:

Painful Oath - Add Wis Necrotic&Radiant damage on the first hit each round vs. your oath. Paragon.

I don't know about this one... everything I've seen (including playing side by side an elf avenger with an Executioner's Axe for a few months, currently 13th level) had me thinking that their actual damage number were fine for a striker until late-paragon to epic. This is a big boost right at 11th... Also, anything that adds tiny bits of typed damage is an eyesore to me in 4E. I guess it's still allowed to happen, but at one point I thought this was a vestige left dead and buried in 3E, good riddance. I hate the way it devolves to out '54 fire damage, 6 radiant, 8 necrotic and radiant' 'So 54 damage?' 'No, 68 total'

Hand of Divine Guidance - Crit your oath target on a 19-20. Epic.

This, on the other hand, was painfully and obliviously missing in Divine Power. And a nice 19-20 crit, no strings attached (no need to trigger your other oath conditions, no melee required), which is sweet. Even with things not going their way an avenger can get a bit of a boost here.


Some of the others:

Distant Vengeance - Man, this looked so much cooler before I read it carefully. I hate that avengers have great area/ranged power options (especially at daily) but they loose their oath bonus to use them. At first I thought this fixed it (another feat I was looking for in DP), then I noticed the ranged basic part. ARG. Radiant Vengeance can't even be used as a basic. A rogue is also a striker who dabbles in controller, but they don't loose sneak attack to use blinding barrage (if they have combat advantage). I really wish this would be fixed.

Unyielding Pursuit - Actually pretty clever idea and totally fitting for an avenger. I like the design of this feat a lot, even if it kind of sucks.

Avenging Resolution - A less annoying (but less effective) brutal variant for any weapon. Fits in with their consistency, and won't trigger annoying re rolls. Eyeballing it I can't see it breaking their DPR math, either, so not a badly designed feat. A bit of an eyesore to have both this and brutal in the same system, but that's just a problem with Dragon in general.

Halo of Isolation - Pretty interesting and fits in with what an avenger wants to do well, power level also sounds about right for paragon. I like it.

Halo of Tethering - I think this one has some rules issues: it should an action cost. I would guess free, and I'd guess that that's not overpowered for epic, though rewording it as a reaction (that lets you just shift the distance they shifted) may be safer.

My first thought on reading Avenging Resolution was that for something like a glaive or spiked chain, it was pretty awesome. Even cool for 2d6 weapons, as you have just upped your minimum damage quite a bit there.

Something like Arbiter of Justice tickles me, and I'd pick it up to find ways to exploit if I played an Avenger. I like the idea of "stealing" kills as it were. I'm sure there is something there for a hybrid Avenger/Warlock. . .but the MAD there is kind of appalling. Let's not think about it.

Halo of Warding. . .it's like Polearm Gamble, kinda? Not really. If you had some way to stop movement, or if your OA did more than just a bit of damage, this could be cool. Skill Domain, for some cheese? I guess auto minion killing, too. Still, easy for me to forget, so any future Avenger I play is unlikely to take this.

Avengers are not really to my taste, really. I dig a dash of Avenger flavor, with other classes, but. . .not whole hog. These feats don't really change that. Pity, because some of these articles really get my character building muscles going.

Jay

My first thought on reading Avenging Resolution was that it doesn't actually specify it only applies to [W] damage, in which case it will raise the minimum damage on ANY extra dice you get, such as multiclass quarry, horned helm, vanguard weapon, etc. So more like Gauntlets of Destruction rather than the brutal property.

Diirk said:

My first thought on reading Avenging Resolution was that it doesn't actually specify it only applies to [W] damage, in which case it will raise the minimum damage on ANY extra dice you get, such as multiclass quarry, horned helm, vanguard weapon, etc. So more like Gauntlets of Destruction rather than the brutal property.

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Hrm, you're right.

It's almost certainly meant to go just with the weapon dice, as otherwise it's even better than brutal.

Man, I can't wait for these to make it into the character builder.

Brad

cignus_pfaccari said:

It's almost certainly meant to go just with the weapon dice, as otherwise it's even better than brutal.

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Note that the damage increase per dice is strictly worse than brutal 2. While brutal 2 just increases your minimum damage, AR also increases your change to only roll minimum damage. For a d12 weapon it adds a measily 0.25 damage on a d12 or 0.3 damage of a d10 as compared to brutal 2 adding 1 damage.

So even on a crit with +6 bloodiron fullblade while wearing two war rings and having taken the devasting critial feat that's just:

2d12 - base epic weapon damage: + 0.50 damage
3d12 - epic high crit damage: + 0.75 damage
6d10 - bloodiron crit damage: +1.80 damage
2d12 - war ring property: + 0.50 damage
1d10 - high crit feat: + 0.30 damage

Total extra damage from Avening Resolution: 0.50 + 3.35 + 3.35 repeated due to bloodiron = 7.20 damage


AR is a trap feat. Either don't take it unless you have really small [W] (e.g. being an avenger/daggermaster) or only take it at high-epic when you can really roll a truckload of dice

Diirk said:

So more like Gauntlets of Destruction rather than the brutal property.

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At the costs of claiming your hand slot, the Gauntlets are flat out superior (and there aren't that many great hand slot items to take instead of the GoD anyway)

Same scenario with Gauntlets of Destruction:

2d12 - base epic weapon damage: + 1.00 damage
3d12 - epic high crit damage: + 1.50 damage
6d10 - bloodiron crit damage: +3.00 damage
2d12 - war ring property: + 1.00 damage
1d10 - high crit feat: + 1.00 damage

Total extra damage from Gauntlets of Destruction: 1.00 + 6.50 + 6.50 repeated due to bloodiron = 14.00 damage

Mirtek said:

Note that the damage increase per dice is strictly worse than brutal 2.

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Hrm, you're right.

I wonder, though, how it'd interact with an already Brutal weapon. The feat would probably take precedence.

Brad

cignus_pfaccari said:

Hrm, you're right.

It's almost certainly meant to go just with the weapon dice, as otherwise it's even better than brutal.

Man, I can't wait for these to make it into the character builder.

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Has it made it into the character builder yet? My subscription expired.

Mirtek said:

AR is a trap feat. Either don't take it unless you have really small [W] (e.g. being an avenger/daggermaster) or only take it at high-epic when you can really roll a truckload of dice

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Yeah... but since Avenger/Daggermaster is such an obvious optimization choice, this may be intended for exactly them.

Cheers, -- N

Nifft said:

Yeah... but since Avenger/Daggermaster is such an obvious optimization choice, this may be intended for exactly them.

Cheers, -- N

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Yes and no. Av/Dm builds are mainly about crit fishing, which for the raw dagger damage this feat does nthing.

Does the re-roll from this apply to crit rolls as well?