Battlerager....Overpowered?

[Danceofmasks]

The table is having fun, and that's fine.

However, I'm an old skool hardcore wargamer, and frankly ... if a party is suboptimal, then they should die.
Repeatedly.

Because attrition determines the nature of reality, competence overcomes danger, and therefore only op characters should ever get to paragon tier.

 

[Obryn]

As I mentioned earlier, the fighter in my campaign chose a 13 Str as his starting Str and both he and the rest of the party are delighted with his defendery capabilities. The starting attack stat lower than 16 hasn't made things significantly more difficult for the party.

Cheers

I think that's awesome.

It gives me more faith in a system I'm already enjoying.

-O

 

[Larrin]

Once you wiff your first 6 attacks in a combat the remaining critters aren't really afraid to walk past and trigger OA's usually =)

But you didn't wiff 6 times in a row by only 1 point of attack bonus...seriously, how often do you miss by 1 point per battle. Once? Twice? Once in two battles? How often do you get hit by a melee attack in a battle? 5? 10? With a reasonable con score, this can quickly become attactive. You save ~10-30 hit points per battle for a cost of maybe not hitting once (with a con of 14-16).

Losing that +1 has an effect, but is that effect really that big? Espeacially when compared staying alive for 1-4 more hits?

Over your carreer, Yeah that +1 to hit is big, but the hp saved will be freaking huge!

In the end, I really think that a standard non-battlerager build with a con of 14+ really gains alot by taking battlerager vigor, and looses only a small bit of effeciency, Certainly not enough to make monsters no longer fear him.

 

[James McMurray]

In the end, I really think that a standard non-battlerager build with a con of 14+ really gains alot by taking battlerager vigor, and looses only a small bit of effeciency, Certainly not enough to make monsters no longer fear him.

Definitely. It's only if you want to actually be a battle rager instead of just strapping on his numbers to your character that you'll start to see a major difference in hit ratios.

My guess is that nobody playtested it as a replacement option, and they focused only on seeing what two full blown builds looked like side by side. If you ignore the case where someone just drops +1 to hit for some temp hp the two builds start looking closer to one another.

Lower AC means those temp hps are burned through faster, and lower to hit means your OAs and Challenges aren't as sticky. Also, the invigorating powers tend to do less damage or have no secondary effects compared to the other powers, so you're trading survivability for damage and/or battlefield control.

Has anyone had a chance to play with a normal battle rager and/or a pseudo-rager who's just in it for the free temp hp? Or better yet, one of each in the same party?

 

[mlund]

In the end, I really think that a standard non-battlerager build with a con of 14+ really gains alot by taking battlerager vigor, and looses only a small bit of effeciency, Certainly not enough to make monsters no longer fear him.

A "standard non-battlerager build with con 14+" is going to either be an 18 STR fighter with 14 CON or a 16 STR, 16 CON Dwarf with a decent Wisdom. Starting out he's going to generate an extra 2-3 Temp HPs when he gets hit by an enemy and he's going to miss 10% more frequently against enemies that a fighter would normally need an 11 to hit. If he goes Hammer over Sword too he's going to miss 20% more frequently. As he levels up and takes feats his quantity of Temp HPs is going to scale up, but he's also going to be relying on more Encounter Powers and Daily Powers in fights - and that 10 or 20% reduction in hitting is going to hurt a lot. It'll be even worse against higher AC monsters, though less noticable against easy targets.

He actually exchanges a significant amount of efficiency in exchange for a significant amount of damage reduction. It may not be a bad deal, but it doesn't appear to be broken.

 

[Wish]

Played with a sword + shield, plate armor wearing battle rager last weekend. At least at low level, it seemed perfectly viable, and probably better than a weapon talent fighter wit the same stats and build. I pretty much immediately wanted to rebuild my fighter to take advantage of the new rules.

 

[Kraydak]

Definitely. It's only if you want to actually be a battle rager instead of just strapping on his numbers to your character that you'll start to see a major difference in hit ratios.

In heroic, +1 to hit exchanged to +2 to damage is a pretty good deal for the battle-rager. In epic, it might be a poor exchange (the 1[W] auto-damage stances can swap it around to an advantage in some circumstances). The offensive gain/loss is, however, never significant.

Lower AC means those temp hps are burned through faster, and lower to hit means your OAs and Challenges aren't as sticky. Also, the invigorating powers tend to do less damage or have no secondary effects compared to the other powers, so you're trading survivability for damage and/or battlefield control.

Yeah. That 1 point of AC off a standard fighter build (2 if the other guy went for plate) is sooo important compared to shaving well over a third of the incoming damage off. Battle-ragers, even considering chain-v-plate, have absurdly more survivability than a weapon-talent-fighter.

The invigorating powers tend to blow, tis true. Crushing Surge is good (read, amazing) for long, drawn out encounters where the healers have run out of healing-surge-triggerers. In Epic, slap Invigorating Exploit on your AoE encounter power of choice and contemplate the hilarity of Force the Battle+Crushing Surge. Otherwise, yes, the invigorating powers are largely irrelevant.

 

[Mengu]

Has anyone had a chance to play with a normal battle rager and/or a pseudo-rager who's just in it for the free temp hp? Or better yet, one of each in the same party?

I'll try it with the following:

Dragonborn Pseudo-Rager
Str 18
Con 14
Dex 13
Int 8
Wis 14
Cha 12
Wearing Scale, using long sword and shield. Feat Toughness. (basically the fighter in my group with Battlerage Vigor instead of Weapon Talent).
Tide of Iron
Cleave

Dwarf Rager
Str 16
Con 18
Dex 12
Int 10
Wis 14
Cha 8
Wearing chain, wielding Maul. Feat Dwarven weapon training.
Brash Strike
Crushing Surge

The dwarf will basically have 2 points less attack bonus, 3 points less AC, 2 points less reflex, but will have many more temp hit points, and will do more damage.

I'm not sure if it will be worthwhile for the standard dragonborn to lose the attack bonus for 2 temp hp's. If I was building from scratch, I'd give the pseudo battle-rager dragonborn a 16 con.

 

[Larrin]

He actually exchanges a significant amount of efficiency in exchange for a significant amount of damage reduction. It may not be a bad deal, but it doesn't appear to be broken.

I would disagree. Since he's a standard build in everyway except for the weapon talent he's only ever 1 attack bonus behind. Being 1 attack bonus behind is only a 10% decrease in hitting if there was a 50% chance he'd hit in the first place (50% to 45% is a 10% decrease). If he has a 60% chance to hit, then its an 8.3% decrease in hitting (if its a 40% chance to hit to begin with its a12.5% decrease, but you're already in trouble anyway at that point), Thus if you have any situational bonuses (righteous brand, flanking, etc) the penalty is further mitigated away from the fearsom 10% less likely to hit.

Still, its a good enough estimate. So if you hit 10% less, that means if you were going to hit 10 times in one fight you will now only hit 9. In any given battle thats going to be difficult to detect how much of a difference it made, or even if it statistically happened, espeacially if you attack less that 20 or so times (assuming the ~50% to hit).

Even at higher levels this won't change much, you'll still have just 1 or two hits per battle that didn't connect because it was one point too low, and it will be have less of an impact on the battle then the fact that you've taken 30+ less damage. You'll stay alive longer, which means more you're in the fight longer, defendering people longer, keeping marks in place and possibly doing fun things like the auto 1W damage stances or something and not using up the healers resources on your poor damaged frame. Its not going to break the game that you took 30+ less damage, but it will have more of a beneficial impact than having a +1 to hit, or so it seems to me.

The accuracy doesn't seem like as significant a loss to an otherwise standard build, not in comparison to what they gain.

 

[Pickles JG]

I am pretty sure that it is as busted as a very broken thing

My LFR character is this:-

Level 6 Dwarf Tanker
Str 17
Con 17
Dex 13
Int 8
Wis 16
Cha 10
Tide of Iron
Cleave
Wearing +1 dwarven plate & shield, wielding +2 vicious craghammer.
Feats:
Dwarven weapon training.
Plate Proficiency
Shield Push
Devoted Challenge

I did have toughness but never really needed it so I have trained it out.
I hit reasonably often & with +3 on OA & challenge attacks for substantial damage. With +2 damage from bracers of mighty striking, the challenge attacks are actually +14 to hit for d10 + 12 rerolling 1 or 2s. I feel robust & dangerous to ignore.

I am very unsure whether the +1 to hit is as good as the temporary hp I would get from battlerager vigour. At 8th with 18 con & the dwarf booster feat I am sure it would not be. 6 hp of every melee attack after the first is too good. This is with a character that is totally unoptimised for the role. Brash strike is disgusting - the CA is offset by Uncanny dodge at paragon - not something I have seen mentioned before. & anything that has bonuses with CA is usually pretty good at getting it for itself so no great loss. I would haave to lose Cleave to get it - minions do not scare me & rain of steel or my lightning throwing hammer are good against them if they harrass others.

So all in all the benefits you get just for the +1 to hit are too much - the otehr stuff pushes it deep into the abyss.