Attack powers with "Sustain Minor"

[Dannyalcatraz]

Quick question: if an attack power has "Sustain Minor", does that mean I could use it more than once in my turn?

For example, the Warlock power Crown of Stars allows a caster who has sustained it to do a Cha vs Will attack against any target in range. Could a Warlock, having cast CoS in the previous turn, use his next turn using all 3 of his actions to "sustain" CoS to make 3 attacks?

 

[Karmic_vegeance]

As fun as it would be, the Compendium states:

"(You can sustain an effect once per turn.)"

You also can't sustain the power on the turn you first use it.

 

[Infiniti2000]

The more interesting question is what happens if a target isn't in range. Can you sustain Crown of Stars?

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I'd say yes.

 

[Pickles JG]

There were a bunch of warlock powers that had this sort of wording & were confusing. They were changed in the warlock errata (playtest?) document that never seemed to get absorbed into the main rules. It might be worth looking it out if you plan on using any as they make more sense.

edit: except this was not one of those powers & apparently the changes did get incorporated.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Yeah, I was going to say I went looking for errata on that one and didn't find any. And its kind of an oddball power anyway: most of the Sustain powers I've noticed are some kind of AoE/Zone or designed to keep a single target affected by a status, like slowed, immobilized, blinded or weakened. This one lets you keep zapping other targets.

...which is why I retrained into that one from Dread star. It has no "Miss effect" and imposes no status, but does higher base damage and lets me zap as a minor action. And for my money, at least, I'd rather shoot something than track another status effect that wears off after a round.*










* Curse you, 4Ed designers, and your love of fiddly status effects!

 

[The Little Raven]

* Curse you, 4Ed designers, and your love of fiddly status effects!

And I'll bless them because they reduced the number of even more fiddly conditions from the previous edition.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

And I'll bless them because they reduced the number of even more fiddly conditions from the previous edition.

My problem with 'em is that they last a round and usually not much longer. Unless they do. And lots of powers seem to have them. And everybody has powers.

Playing in my group, that translates into a lot of players forgetting that an effect has ended after one round (typically) or is still going (atypically). Bonuses appear and disappear from round to round. And it has caused our DM (who IS having fun, no mistake) a few headaches as he has to deal with tracking multiple effects.

(Hence "fiddly".)

In 3.X, most PC actions didn't have lingering effects- that was limited mainly to spells. We could figure out a bonus was going to last an entire combat (or longer) and not have to worry about forgetting it. Most people playing non-casters didn't have to worry about them at all.

 

[The Little Raven]

(Hence "fiddly".)

I consider having to recalculate base character math (and all of the fallout from the change) to be far more fiddly than remembering if an effect is still active or not, particularly since I found players and DMs having the exact same problem in 3.X with caster level-based duration, and random recharges (like the breath weapon recharge of 1d4+1 rounds).

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Its a big, big world- one man's fiddly can be another's convenient...and vice versa.