D&D4: Most Unique and Interesting Powers.

[Balesir]

No, we understood how it actually worked. We saw that a blindfold would be sufficient. We just didn't assume that regular old humans, who couldn't see the game rules, would ever figure that out.

Thay wouldn't need to see the game rules - just have non-violent relations with an eladrin for a while. It stands as an assumption if all humans and eladrin ever do is fight (in which case what has being a crminal go to do with anything?), but hang out with one another for a while and it'll become fairly well understood.

"Ha ha - pop through the door and give Mikal a fright!"

"Funny, but I can't - I can only jump to places I can see"

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Thay wouldn't need to see the game rules - just have non-violent relations with an eladrin for a while. It stands as an assumption if all humans and eladrin ever do is fight (in which case what has being a crminal go to do with anything?), but hang out with one another for a while and it'll become fairly well understood.

"Ha ha - pop through the door and give Mikal a fright!"

"Funny, but I can't - I can only jump to places I can see"

That assumes they're willing to reveal that weakness in front of other races. I'm not sure that's exactly realistic. There might even be a strong cultural taboo against it.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

"Ha ha - pop through the door and give Mikal a fright!"

"Funny, but I can't - I can only jump to places I can see"

If the mysterious faerie creatures start explaining their powers, then the world stops resembling pseudo-Medieval-Europe-but-with-magic. You could get a similar result if you had wizards go around and try to explain their spells to everyone. Magic stops being magical if random Muggles start understanding how it works.

You could make a world where everyone knew that magic was real, and even the constable was aware of standardized counter-measures against spellcasters, but that seems like the exception rather than the rule, and it wasn't the world we were playing in.

 

[Hussar]

No, we understood how it actually worked. We saw that a blindfold would be sufficient. We just didn't assume that regular old humans, who couldn't see the game rules, would ever figure that out.

All of the evidence was there. They could have figured it out, if they'd bothered to test it. That just didn't seem like something they would do. Maybe in a high-magic setting, everyone would know enough about magic that they would think to try the obvious test, but that wasn't the case in the world the DM managed to cobble together from the three books we had.

Of course, thought, you assume jails with bars? Never minding that jails rarely had anything that looked like cells (do you have any idea how much that would cost?) - doors made of bars and windows with bars. Instead, jails often were just holes in the ground with a solid door. There, no more Eladrin escaping. "Lock him in the DUNGEON" works on Eladrin pretty much as well as anyone else.

But, hey, your world, no problem.

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Favourite powers - hrmmm, that psionic power that teleported enemies out of the area. That was a lot of fun. Warlock's bloodaport ability was a personal favorite- just too cool and so fitting with the class, kill something and teleport 30 feet. Fun.

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

I haven't got out of Heroic with 4E in play, but I like the really simple stuff that just creates the tactical minigame: Footwork lure/Tide of iron is a simple twist on 'I attack' that outstrips the 3/5E fighter. Similarly Acrobatic strike. The difference between 'I attack' and 'I attack and re-position the target slightly' is yooge.

I also like the Warlord a lot - stuff like No Gambit is wasted is really cool. Had a moment in the last session in which the Sorcerer blew their explosive pyre to hit roll and was sad, No Gambit hit the table, Sorcerer AP'ed into an Explosive Pyre which turned the combination. Made the sorcerer feel really good and the warlord was pleased with turning a tough fight.

Conversely you have twin strike which is lame - it drives the entire ranger class into a boring place. I kinda wish it never existed and the show piece ranger at will was Throw and Stab or something else.

 

[pemerton]

Conversely you have twin strike which is lame - it drives the entire ranger class into a boring place.

I kind-of agree, but maybe not fully. At least, I think some sort of ad hoc rescue is possible.

The ranger in our game is an archer ranger/cleric hybrid. All his ranger encounter powers are immediate actions; he also has one (mandatory) cleric encounter power. On-turn he uses either a cleric power if he needs to do something interesting/important, or otherwise Twin Strike. The interesting ranger action happens in the choice of when to use off-turn actions, and which ones.

I should probably add: the character was originally a straight ranger, and was repurposed as a hybrid at 6th level, when those rules came out. The player of the character dubbed that repurposing "Operation Do Something With My Character Other Than Twin Strike".

 

[The_Furious_Puffin]

I kind-of agree, but maybe not fully. At least, I think some sort of ad hoc rescue is possible.

Yeah, you can do stuff around it, and I think it's much more noticeable with an archer build than a melee build. This digresses from the thread topic a bit, so more cool powers.

One of my favorites from an epic destiny is the Dark Wanderer's capstone, Long Walk Back. It's not super useful as it comes a bit late and the delay isn't great, but it is super flavorful and instantly sets the tone.

 

[Jhaelen]

Killing them is way easier.

Killing criminals is always 'easier'. Why bother taking anyone prisoner?

 

[The Crimson Binome]

Killing criminals is always 'easier'. Why bother taking anyone prisoner?

A good society places some value on the life of a thinking creature. All else being equal, life is preferable to death, unless there's some sort of mitigating circumstance. If you think a criminal is likely to re-offend, then killing might be the lesser of two evils (above letting them kill someone else in the future).

If you know that someone can teleport, then that's a huge mitigating circumstance. You have to re-evaluate all of the probabilities associated with your actions, because the chance that this person will escape and re-offend, if you don't kill them, increases significantly.

 

[pemerton]

One of my favorites from an epic destiny is the Dark Wanderer's capstone, Long Walk Back. It's not super useful as it comes a bit late and the delay isn't great, but it is super flavorful and instantly sets the tone.

I like the flavour. Have you seen it in play (I haven't)?