Vorpal Uber Weapons?!?

[Ibixat]

For those who insist 2d4 = one die and want to sort them out, more power to you, those who don't, I agree with you.


BUT if you want to simplify the tracking of 2d4 for those who insist on doing it the hard way, just grab some blank D16's off the interwebs, grab your sharpee marker and label them 2 3 3 4 4 4 5 5 5 5 6 6 6 7 7 8 and only re-roll them on an 8.

And if you can't find the stuff to make it, design it yourself and sell the design to a company like chessex and roll in the dough instead of the multiple d4's.

 

[Trebor62]

Mechanically, re-rolling every singular die (ie, every d4 that comes up 4 on a falchion) gives an advantage to that weapon. It's substantial, but it's not jaw-dropping.

A vorpal falchion's average damage on its normal dice goes up from 5 to 6.75, a 35% improvement.

A vorpal longsword's average damage on its normal dice goes up from 4.5 to 5.2, a 16% improvement.

On a 7[w] attack, a falcion's damage improves from 35 to 47. A longsword's damage will improve from 31 to 36.

In terms of balance, I'd pull for the "8 on 2d4" angle. It screw falchions, unfortunately, but it doesn't catapult the maul (2d6) any further into the lead as the best weapon of 4e, and in fact brings it a bit down comparatively, which is a good thing.

Dont forget those ratio's will tighten up when you add in str and fixed damage bonuses.

Technically Vorpal would not apply to Mauls, its only for Axes and heavy blades. However I would allow it anyway.

Hmm? Of the 16 possible combinations on 2d4, seven of them involve a 4, and one of those involves two 4s.

So if you roll a d8 sixteen times, you can expect to roll two 8s. If you roll 2d4 sixteen times, you can expect to roll eight 4s. You roll a 4 four times as often as you roll an 8.


-Hyp.

Yes but you are compairing apples to oranges which is not a meaningful comparsion. 2d4 is about equal to 1d8 in terms of effect hence you really have 4 2d4 results against 2 1d8 results, which is twice as often in terms of net effect. The damage effect is what matters, the probablity is only a component of that.

 

[DracoSuave]

That is indeed a good example of a typo: on P276 for encounter read daily, and for 10 thunder damge, read 1d8 thunder damage.

That was what I initially thought: that only high crit vorpal weapons got serious vorpalization. but most people have said that the daily power and the critical dice also count.

For maxing on a critical, high crit and critical dice dont count, from what I can tell.

Vorpal's quality doesn't isolate weapon damage dice, but it just says damage dice in general. High-crit is certainly damage by the weapon (it's the weapon's property), and critical dice are also a property of the weapon (d12s according to the very magic item description we're using.)

 

[IanB]

Are you just trolling?

No, I'm not. I'm honestly trying to figure out why you think this is an issue or that something is broken. To me it just looks like a feature. How exactly will the game suffer in actual play for falchions being good at being vorpal? Throughout this entire thread, you've never really articulated why this is actually a *problem*.

"Under certain circumstances, a 2d4 damage weapon can do more average damage than a d12 weapon" is not necessarily a bug in the system - and if it doesn't break the game (which it does not appear to do) in any significant way, what is the issue?

 

[Hypersmurf]

At no point does Vorpal even -refer- to 'weapon damage dice' OR 'weapon damage die'. So mention or use of the game term 'weapon damage die' or '...... dice' is sophistry. The term used is 'damage dice' period.

In fact, the term used is 'damage die'.

And it's exactly the same term used on p219: "a falchion (which has a damage die of 2d4)".

Not "weapon damage dice" or "weapon damage die" or "...... dice"; Vorpal says "damage die", falchion says "damage die".

Yes but you are compairing apples to oranges which is not a meaningful comparsion. 2d4 is about equal to 1d8 in terms of effect hence you really have 4 2d4 results against 2 1d8 results, which is twice as often in terms of net effect. The damage effect is what matters, the probablity is only a component of that.

If you like.

In which case your argument is "It's illogical that a 2d4 weapon, which is about equivalent to a 1d8 weapon, should gain half as much use from Vorpal as the 1d8 weapon! It's far more logical that a 1d8 weapon, which is about equivalent to a 2d4 weapon, should gain half as much use from Vorpal as the 2d4 weapon!"

... did I follow that correctly?

-Hyp.

 

[erik_the_guy]

When you roll 2d4 with a vorpal weapon and you roll...
no 4s: re-roll no dice
one 4: re-roll 1 die
two 4s: re-roll 2 dice

The average damage with a vorpal falchion is not broken. In fact, each 2d4 you roll with a vorpal weapon turns up an average of about 6.66 damage. This is only 1.66 damage higher than the normal average of 5 on 2d4. It's not a big deal. Vorpal weapons are great for powers with high [W] though.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

Not that custserve ever gets any credit here, and not that I really like the ruling that they gave for illusions, at least from a game design consistency point of view, but that ruling could enlighten us a little here.

They basically said that when an example contradicts a rule, especially a specific rule, then the example should be ignored. The ruling meant that the illusion powers don't get the psychic keyword, despite doing psychic damage. While this is a contradiction to the example on page 55 of the PHB that discusses poison damage and poison keywords going together, the illusion powers are not wrong. This is because the illusions are examples of specific rules, and the rule about damage and keywords always going together is both an example, and meant to be more general than the specifics of the illusion powers.

This type of ruling can be extrapolated here to mean that the example of the falchion and the reference to damage die is an example, and a general all at the same time. The vorpal weapon gives a specific that contradicts this by using dice not as [w], but as little plastic polyhedrons with numbers. This seems especially important when the example is for a defined game concept that is not even used in the example (weapon damage die=[w]). It is not spelled out explicitly like this, but the precedent of the illusion powers can still shed some light on this subject. While the wording is the same in the example as in the vorpal weapon description, they are not necessarily defined game terms, they are just expressions. A game term would be defined and then used in an example. Weapon damage die is defined as [w]. Damage die is not a defined term, and hence was a sloppy addition (or more accurately a sloppy omission of 'weapon') to the example. Better editing would have caught this.

Sorry Hyp, I think that your example, which is the only thing refuting the contrarian point, falls into the precedent of this custserve ruling, and thus is refuted.

The inclusion of "any" in the vorpal weapon description I think adds to this. "The damage die" would make this a little murkier, but I think "any" implies that there will be more than one, and you address them all with this ability.

 

[Hypersmurf]

The inclusion of "any" in the vorpal weapon description I think adds to this. "The damage die" would make this a little murkier, but I think "any" implies that there will be more than one, and you address them all with this ability.

The 'any damage die' tells us that it's not only a weapon damage die that counts.

If I deal a d6 through a class feature, that's a damage die. If I deal a d12 from a critical hit, that's a damage die. If I deal 2d4 as the [W] of the falchion, that's a damage die. Any damage die can be rerolled if it rolls max... so if I roll a 6 on the d6, or a 12 on the d12, or an 8 on the 2d4, that damage die can be rerolled.

-Hyp.

 

[PrecociousApprentice]

That is not an unreasonable interpretation of the rule Hyp. I still will go with following the example of set by custserve with the illusion powers. An example is not rules text per se, and any rules text that contradicts an example trumps the example. Since the conclusions that you draw are based on a single example, which is contradicted in other areas by rules text, I would say that your example is trumped. But you do make a good point about including all the other damage dice as well.

 

[Trebor62]

In fact, the term used is 'damage die'.

And it's exactly the same term used on p219: "a falchion (which has a damage die of 2d4)".

Not "weapon damage dice" or "weapon damage die" or "...... dice"; Vorpal says "damage die", falchion says "damage die".



If you like.

In which case your argument is "It's illogical that a 2d4 weapon, which is about equivalent to a 1d8 weapon, should gain half as much use from Vorpal as the 1d8 weapon! It's far more logical that a 1d8 weapon, which is about equivalent to a 2d4 weapon, should gain half as much use from Vorpal as the 2d4 weapon!"

... did I follow that correctly?

-Hyp.

Not at all, while I said about if you wish to be precise 2d4 is superior to 1d8 and it would be strange to turn that small advantage in to a disadvantage by adding Vorpal to the weapons in question. The RAW simple extend that advantage, where as your interpretation would reverse it.