Reign of Steel - 1(W) Damage ????

[AbdulAlhazred]

It is a very situational power, especially depending on the tactics your DM uses against you. It rather hates minions, of course (and shows how weak minions can be).

It gets better when the battle gets bigger.

Cheers!

Yeah, what I found was that it was always good for something. There would be days when you never ran into a fight where it was an overwhelmingly good power, but chances were still that in any given adventuring day there would at least be one encounter where it produced enough damage to pull its weight. And then there were the times when it just rocked and rolled big time. My sister's dwarf used it heavily. I think it is a pretty balanced power overall, though definitely a top choice for that slot for most fighters. If you have a bard or warlord that goes pretty heavy into forced movement things can get fairly nasty. It is really one of those powers that you'll rarely say "this turned the tide" but OTOH when you can deliver several extra free W's of guaranteed damage every round...

 

[Psikus]

It is a very situational power, especially depending on the tactics your DM uses against you. It rather hates minions, of course (and shows how weak minions can be).

It gets better when the battle gets bigger.

I think you are underselling it quite a bit. Even in the worst case scenario (say, damaging just a single monster each turn, on a sword and board fighter), it is a very respectable damage source - ticking for automatic damage each turn without needing to invest a minor action. And in my experience, unless you are fighting a solo, you are very likely to have at least a couple of foes stuck to your fighter... and that is at level 6 and below. Once you get Come and Get it, you are all but guaranteed to have one big turn every encounter where you get virtually the whole enemy team in melee range.

So, in my opinion, the power is fairly strong to begin with, and becomes situationally amazing. For what it's worth, I've played it a lot, both as originally written and after house ruling it to make it weaker (having it trigger at the end of the monsters' turns - and in a campaign that also nerfed Come and Get It!), and it always performed really well.

 

[Xyrlove Woodsoul]

My experience with it has been somewhat of a Catch 22; given that if I have a lot of enemies around me, I end up doing a bunch of damage with it, but, if I have a lot of enemies around me, they also tend to pound on me, and a lot of the time, knock me unconscious, and once knocked unconscious, RoS goes "bye-bye" (given its a stance). That said, I never not take it as one of my fighter powers; it's just that it sucks when you get knocked unconscious early, when it's active. Overall, I think it is a tad overrated. Especially, if healing is scarce.

 

[bargle0]

My experience with it has been somewhat of a Catch 22; given that if I have a lot of enemies around me, I end up doing a bunch of damage with it, but, if I have a lot of enemies around me, they also tend to pound on me, and a lot of the time, knock me unconscious, and once knocked unconscious, RoS goes "bye-bye" (given its a stance). That said, I never not take it as one of my fighter powers; it's just that it sucks when you get knocked unconscious early, when it's active. Overall, I think it is a tad overrated. Especially, if healing is scarce.

If it encourages the DM to focus fire on you instead of one of your allies, then it did it's job. Rain of Steel ensures that the Fighter is a credible threat, thus giving the DM cause to attack him.

 

[S'mon]

I've been using it in a multi-session long grindy battle with a single foe; she takes half damage from attacks and is either elite or solo (12th level PCs) so the fight goes on forever. Having some auto-damage at the start of each of her turns is very good indeed.

I think it's less useful if fights are shorter, eg IMCs I halve monster hp, but that means fights tend to only go about 3 rounds, so small amounts of auto-damage prob less useful.