Avengers Essentials

[Kobold Avenger]

This one was fairly helpful, and I felt it didn't get caught up in the "make you're AC ridiculously high using hide armor and various feats" bit, since the rules revision to shield of faith changed that.

I think the best thing in this article was the suggestions on what each Avenger of each non-evil deity motivation and oath was. And it actually linked Al Quadim's Holy Slayer as the predecessor of the Avenger.

It's suggestions were mainly about keeping your Oath of Enmity valid, and what you should do for it, for keeping others away. It's also the first advice I saw that admitted it effectively doubles your chances of scoring a critical hit.

There's some useful feats, though one of them the paragon Painful Oath which is "add your wisdom damage in radiant and necrotic to the first attack every turn" might be a bit controversial. The ones that stood out to me were ones that made squares adjacent to you difficult terrain, gave you opportunity attacks against any other enemy who entered a square adjacent to you, and one that gave you 19-20 criticals against your oath target.

 

[Dragonhelm]

Good lord, I saw this thread title and thought, "Avengers Assemble!". I really need more sleep.

 

[Remathilis]

Good lord, I saw this thread title and thought, "Avengers Assemble!". I really need more sleep.

Good. Not just me then!

 

[Klaus]

Good lord, I saw this thread title and thought, "Avengers Assemble!". I really need more sleep.

Add in a bashing shield and you're good to go.

 

[Appleseeth]

Some really great general feats in the article. A lot of feats that just allowed for you to do to your oath what high strength characters could do to all with other feats.

Also: Avenging Resolution - Is brutal 2 for every damage die way too good? Can anyone say Falchion? Wasn't that the problem with the artificer paragon path?

 

[Rechan]

Add in a bashing shield and you're good to go.

Throwable Shield.

 

[keterys]

Also: Avenging Resolution - Is brutal 2 for every damage die way too good? Can anyone say Falchion? Wasn't that the problem with the artificer paragon path?

It's not brutal 2, it's 'becomes a 3' which is _sharply_ different. For example, 1d12b2 is 7.5 average (+1 higher than 1d12) while 1d12 (1&2->3) is 6.75 (.25 higher)

This article may have had a stronger effect on avenger balance than Divine Power did... it looks like things that are intended to be fixes to the class, and I'm worried about that appearing as a dragon article.

 

[Cadfan]

Yeah, the math on a Falchion with 1s and 2s becoming 3s isn't actually so bad.

A Falchion normally averages 5 per [W], because a 1d4 averages 2.5.

With that feat, the Falchion averages 6.5, because each individual d4 changes its distribution from 1, 2, 3, 4, to 3, 3, 3, 4, which averages 3.25. Double that for two d4s, and you get 6.5.

A Fullblade averages 6.5 right out of the box, and gets better damage on critical hits because it maximizes a d12 instead of 2d4, and the bonus damage from the high critical is a d12 instead of 2d4.

So feat by feat, the Fullblade is better.

And if you use a Fullblade with that feat, you don't get much. The average damage just goes from 6.5 to 6.75, a much lower gain than you'd get from Weapon Focus.

The feat that adds your wisdom modifier on an extra time in damage, though... watch out for that one. Its like that +5 damage on Prime Shot targets feat, except better.

 

[JustKim]

I just started playing an avenger a couple of weeks ago, and I knew I wanted an Arabian character. I've been borrowing from Al-Qadim, but I forgot about the holy slayer kit flavor, so that was very helpful!

I liked "Avengers of" as well, I love the idea of an avenger of Ioun rebelling against rulers who withhold education and literacy. That fits her background very well.

 

[Appleseeth]

It's not brutal 2, it's 'becomes a 3' which is _sharply_ different. For example, 1d12b2 is 7.5 average (+1 higher than 1d12) while 1d12 (1&2->3) is 6.75 (.25 higher)

Wow, I completely misread that. It is still amazing on a Falchion, or with any added dice from crits or multiclass striker damage. Minimum 6 rolled damage is much much better than minimum 2 damage.