July Errata is up

[fanboy2000]

Broken builds of many types "speed up combat". Do you really like all broken builds?

Hey, I'm just glad for the change of pace. I wasn't trying to saying anything about broken builds, you were, but I wasn't. No sarcasm, I really do like the fact that someone is complaining about a power speeding up combat.

 

[Shin Okada]

The free action rule only applies to free attacks. Action Points grant an extra Standard action. So if you make an attack with the standard action granted by the action point you are making an attack with a standard action not a free action.

Ah! I see. So Bravura Presence still works.

 

[Aegeri]

Hey, I'm just glad for the change of pace. I wasn't trying to saying anything about broken builds, you were, but I wasn't. No sarcasm, I really do like the fact that someone is complaining about a power speeding up combat.

I'd like to point out too that in the recent "What's the most boring creature" thread I think it was heavily dominated by insubstantial creatures.

 

[Nightfly]

Well, Magic Missile needed a buff very badly. It was by far the worst of the Wizard at-wills, not worth considering at all unless you planned to do cute things with it through feats and items, and really not even then.

Compare Magic Missile to Biting Swarm, one of the "counts as a ranged basic attack" spells that seekers have. Biting Swarm does more damage (assuming at least a longbow) AND imposes a great status effect AND also puts that debuff on every adjacent monster AND that splash effect is enemies only. Until this change, Wizards were screwed so badly in comparison on their "counts as a ranged basic" that I actively avoided playing a Wizard when there was a Warlord in the party.

So MM badly needed a spit-polish. Whether autohit was the solution is a different question, but it's nice that one of the iconic wizard spells is no longer for clueless beginners only, and that Wizard's Fury is now a viable daily. And truly, MM is still not that good. It's certainly not the best wizard at-will, and maybe isn't even the best single-target wizard at-will. Nor is the anything new for wizards to have an at-will that deals automatic damage; remember Cloud of Daggers?

Coming right after the announcement that Burning Hands will be changed to deal partial damage on a miss, it seems that WotC is intent on fixing some of the classic wizard powers that were underpowered in PH1, which I think is terrific. I'm crossing my fingers that Fireball will be de-suckified once Essentials comes out.

 

[Mentat55]

I don't like it, and I don't like the changes that it's going to require to get it working as intended.

How to break this... just off the top of my head: Inescapable Force doesn't require a hit, and it adds a damage roll, so now Magic Missile kills insubstantial critters at about 4x the expected rate rather than 1.5x.

I'm not sure making Inescapable Force barely worth taking counts as broken. Actually, if a player wants to spend a paragon feat to be awesome against insubstantial creatures, then they should be justly rewarded.

I'm kinda torn, overall, about making MM automatic damage. On one hand, it is THE classic wizard spell, and has always worked this way. OTOH, the auto-damage of MM made it the one 1st level spell that always saw use well into the highest levels, which suggested that maybe it shouldn't be this way. However, right now I don't see any way to really abuse the new MM. It goes from "meh, I might take it to have a decent RBA and for legacy reasons" to "this could be really useful in some situations, and the rest of the time it is guaranteed damage."

 

[Mirtek]

Level based immunity.......

MMO?

No, deities and primordials

 

[Aegeri]

No, deities and primordials

It's also something they are dropping in all fairness. I don't believe allabah, Lolth, Imix or the other dood actually have this. I never understood the point because such creatures will squish PCs trivially below level 20 (even with optimized cheese).

 

[Gort]

I don't really get the point of resurrecting the Magic Missile sacred cow.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Some nice changes in there, for sure.

Not much PHBIII, though, as I had expected more, even though I am do not know much about that book.

Also, 3 months till the next update, not two.

 

[Obryn]

It's also something they are dropping in all fairness. I don't believe allabah, Lolth, Imix or the other dood actually have this. I never understood the point because such creatures will squish PCs trivially below level 20 (even with optimized cheese).

Lolth does, though it only triggers when she loses 1/2 of her spidery form's HPs. I don't believe the others do.

It seems to be reserved for gods; primordials and far realm abominations need not apply.

-O