What do you think about this bow?

[Rezzin]

Perhaps this is just item jealousy in action but last night our DM gave our Ranger a +2 magic Longbow with a Daily power that concerned me. (I think it was a custom item, not sure though maybe it does exist...)

The Daily power is a Free Action to allow any hit by the bow to become a critical. The ranger used it last night and with the quarry dice and extra crit dice from the bow he did like 70 damage - we are level 10 if that matters.

To me it just seems a bit over powered to turn any hit into about 70 damage once per day. Maybe I am wrong though....do you guys think this bow is over powered at all?

 

[SSquirrel]

I dunno, one auto-crit all day long seems like a reasonable thing to me. 70 damage at level 10 seems lower than I remember people doing multiple times a round in 3E tho, so I dunno if I would sweat it. Without having all the math for the attack in front of me it's hard to really compare.

 

[aco175]

I had the level 5 paladin do like 60 to 70 points of damage on a crit. It seemed like a lot to me.

 

[Mesh Hong]

I would probably rate that as a level 12 or maybe 13 item, so while it is certainly powerful it is not over the top for a level 10 character.

At level 10 you might expect that a character would have a +3 primary weapon, so this bow is actually an enhancement level lower with a daily effect that maximises his biggest attack (which more than makes up for it).

 

[Syrsuro]

I'd say it is a bit overpowered, but to put it in perspective I'd have to know what kind of items the DM is giving the rest of you. It's not game breaking, but it could potentially come to dominate play (that's an awful lot of guaranteed damage every game session - what do the rest of the players get to do to make themselves shine as brightly?)

Personally, I'd have been tempted to make one of the following changes:

1) Restrict its use to an At-Will power.

2) The attack is not changed to a critical. Rather, the player rolls the extra damage dice that he would roll if he had scored a critical hit and deals the result as extra damage. (based on Righteous Rage of Tempus errata). If the power is used on a (rolled) critical hit, the extra damage is maximized.

I'd also beware of whether the character has any powers that trigger off of critical hits and if so, I'd add a rider that this does not count as a critical hit for the purposes of such feats.

Carl

 

[Rezzin]

I'd say it is a bit overpowered, but to put it in perspective I'd have to know what kind of items the DM is giving the rest of you. It's not game breaking, but it could potentially come to dominate play (that's an awful lot of guaranteed damage every game session - what do the rest of the players get to do to make themselves shine as brightly?)

Personally, I'd have been tempted to make one of the following changes:

1) Restrict its use to an At-Will power.

2) The attack is not changed to a critical. Rather, the player rolls the extra damage dice that he would roll if he had scored a critical hit and deals the result as extra damage. (based on Righteous Rage of Tempus errata). If the power is used on a (rolled) critical hit, the extra damage is maximized.

I'd also beware of whether the character has any powers that trigger off of critical hits and if so, I'd add a rider that this does not count as a critical hit for the purposes of such feats.

Carl

In comparisson:

The PC with the Crit bow described above plays two PC's. A paladin with a +3 Inspiring/Frost Broadsword and the ranger with the crit bow also has a +3 Distance/Lightning Longbow. (The DM has given this player some custom weapons by combining lower level properties.)

My PC's are a bard and a barbarian and have a +3 Piercing Songblade (Longsword) and a +3 Thundering Execution Axe respectively. We are all level 10.

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The alarming part of the weapon could be due to the fact that if the PC hit with a fairly damaging attack and then followed it up with an action point and then utilized the crit daily power = lots of damage; over 50% of it guaranteed on a hit. High damage dealing against 10th lvl PC's according to chart on page 42 of the DMG is around 25-30 if I remember correctly. 70 - 100 points seems staggering in comparison. I agree that the bow could be used with restrictions such as at-will's only or using an action point when using the power. Then again, maybe I am jumping the gun.