Is Mass Charm Balanced?

[bganon]

It's an encounter power. If it were spammable, then yes, fighting amongst yourselves would be annoying. But as an encounter power, in terms of pure damage it will almost certainly do less per target than Dancing Flames (often much less), and in terms of control guaranteed slide 5 is still rather underwhelming (to compare with other multitarget "control" spells see Force Volley or Crushing Titan's Fist from the PHB).

Honestly, IMO the main thing that keeps Mass Charm from being a crap power are the Enchantment Apprentice and Master features. Without those, I think most Wizards (or Wizard-spell-using monsters) are better off taking something else.

 

[Sebastianelgar]

I have run across one monster that has a similar power, it was in a Dungeon adventure and I'm not near my books to check if it exists outside of that adventure. Ettin Wrath Chanter standard at will Invoke Fury 1 enemy within 5 makes a charge or basic attack against a target of Ettin's choice. The PC's hated that especially since they had a charge optimized character that I targetted with it most of the time, at least until he figured out the range and stayed the heck out of it.

 

[wyrdone]

Thanks for the feedback, I do feel a little better about it now.

I think one of my DM's objections is that, in order to make combat a little more fast and furious, he doubles the monster's damage and halves their hitpoints. So when I use a power like this it's like a double whammy for him because his charmed monster is now hitting his friend who has half of his normal hit points, for twice as much as he'd normally do. That's probably why Mass Charm feels out of whack in our party.

 

[keterys]

That sounds almost exactly why it's a little off for your party. Usually, monsters have a much lower chance to hit themselves than PCs do (like 50% chance to miss instead of 25%) and their damage is on par, at best. The area is also pretty small and you can't enlarge it. They do get a save if you slide them into hazardous terrain, of course.

Anyhow, it is one of the better powers at that level, but I think it's reasonable to have a few powers with interesting differences like that.

 

[SFurtwangler]

Yeah, it might be reasonable to have him half their damage when you use mass charm (back to normal) or even to quarter it (to compensate for them having 50% normal HP) and it would still be a good power (as good as it is normally). Like you said, with his houserule, the value of that power quadruples, though, so I'm not surprised he doesn't like it and it feels a bit wrong.

He could also add a line where you do have to hit will (if that makes you both feel more comforatable). Depending on your attack bonus vs. average monster wills, this would probably cause 25-50% of those attacks not to occur, which might help counteract either of the two adjustments he has made.

He basically needs to houserule that power to keep it from exploiting his other houserule, I think. That, or you guys could make a gentleman's agreement not to use powers that cause monsters to attack for you - but that restricts away most enchantment/charm powers.

 

[eamon]

Thanks for the feedback, I do feel a little better about it now.

I think one of my DM's objections is that, in order to make combat a little more fast and furious, he doubles the monster's damage and halves their hitpoints. So when I use a power like this it's like a double whammy for him because his charmed monster is now hitting his friend who has half of his normal hit points, for twice as much as he'd normally do. That's probably why Mass Charm feels out of whack in our party.

Yeah; in general, PC attacks are better and monster defenses are better. So normally, a dominate vs. a monster (kind of what this is) is much much less effective than a dominate vs. PC - after all, the monster hits less strongly, and he's hitting a target that's stronger.

But if your DM altered the balance, that might not be such a reasonable assumption. A simple fix would be for him to reverse-compensate: i.e. dominated monsters deal 1/4 damage as usual in his campaign: 1/2 to compensate for the double damage, and 1/2 to compensate for lower hitpoints.

 

[keterys]

Quarter damage would be overly nerfed, since he could just take a good damage power and exploit the half hp himself.

 

[SFurtwangler]

Quarter damage would be overly nerfed, since he could just take a good damage power and exploit the half hp himself.

That is a good point. Basically, all PC attacks exploit the half HP of monsters, so halving the charmed mosnters damage OR having the PC attack Will would probably even out the double-whammy feeling, IF you and your DM decide you need to fix the issue.

There are other powers that his rule might affect, too, like some where you redirect damage from you to an enemy.

 

[keterys]

Yeah, attack redirection is stronger (Dimensional Vortex, for example), halving or negating damage is stronger, etc... Every form of dominate or forced attack.

It feels like this power is just the tip of the iceberg.

Monster damage was almost doubled by MM3 errata, and we didn't really change much, so... this feels pretty similar.

 

[Dice4Hire]

Its definitely very powerful and I certainly wouldn't want to see it used against us. But there are LOTS of PC powers that would be too deadly in the hands of monsters so I'm not sure that is a fair metric.

And vice-versa, to be sure. I can think of lots of monster powers that I would love my characters to have. Really nice ones out there.