Avenger Experience?

[Storminator]

How would they do that? They are always missing half of the requirements for any weapon mastery feat. They have no use for str and 17 is the lowest requirement for any mastery, (light blade)

Yeah, somehow I was remembering those feats as easier to get. Yow!

Avengers can get some benefit from Devastating Critical, and some of the Channel Divinity feats that trigger on a crit tho.

I was looking at a bunch of the powers for Avengers, and they don't seem to get much more than 2[W] for the vast majority of them. I'll have to look over the powers more. I hope Avengers don't turn out to be disappointing, because they have a huge cool factor.

PS

 

[DracoSuave]

Avengers don't -need- extra crit chance, Oath handles that nicely by doubling up on their crits (almost)

 

[Storminator]

Avengers don't -need- extra crit chance, Oath handles that nicely by doubling up on their crits (almost)

True, but if you double a double, that's even better right? It's no longer a triple!

If you can rely on lots of crits, then you can take items like Vicious Weapons (+1d12 per plus on a crit) or feats like Devastating Critical or Kord's Favor and feel like you get some nice return on your investment.

But as was pointed out, there are some prohibitive requirements there.

PS

 

[cmbarona]

Or Vorpal weapons would be fantastic (aren't they also d12 crit dice?). I'm really hoping to see some crit-range-increasing feats come through in Divine Power, and/or some weapons that really synch with Avengers. Although I suppose they probably won't print any more items for divine classes in Divine Power. If I recall correctly, they didn't print any new items in Martial Power. On a quick sidenote, I was really hoping on seeing some good ones in PHB2, but no such luck, sadly.

 

[Klaus]

Or Vorpal weapons would be fantastic (aren't they also d12 crit dice?). I'm really hoping to see some crit-range-increasing feats come through in Divine Power, and/or some weapons that really synch with Avengers. Although I suppose they probably won't print any more items for divine classes in Divine Power. If I recall correctly, they didn't print any new items in Martial Power. On a quick sidenote, I was really hoping on seeing some good ones in PHB2, but no such luck, sadly.

Vorpal Glaive is where it's at. 25% chance of rolling maximum result for each d4 is awesome.

 

[cmbarona]

The glaive's reach is a bit wasted on Avengers. Why not Vorpal Falchion with Gauntlets of Destruction? Now there's some real munchkin min/maxing.

 

[Prestidigitalis]

I'm intrigued by Longtooth Shifter Isolating Avenger and Razorclaw Shifter Pursuing Avenger.

While bloodied, the first is extra resilient and extra damaging, and the latter is extra resilient and extra good at pursuit. The Longtooth misses out on an Int bonus, but that isn't necessarily a big deal by comparison.

 

[James McMurray]

There are several paragon paths you could multiclass into to get higher critical hits.

Draeven Marauder (Dragon mag): lots of shifting, spears crit on 19-20

Student of Caiphon: Fear and Radiant powers crit on 18-20, and the 20th level utility is beefy. Other than that it's a waste.

Radiant ervant: a weaker, but Core, version of the Student of Caiphon.

Daggermaster: you're stuck using daggers, but it's a Core always-on 18-20 crit range.

I have thought about taking the "Bravo" multiclass feat from Dragon #373 for my Avenger.

Anyone else looked at this?

What does it do? I tried looking it up in the compendium, but "bravo" netted 0 hits.

 

[cmbarona]

Just wanted to pitch in my 2 cp.

I played a level 2 Elven Pursuit Avenger a couple of days ago, and it was a complete blast. We had three PCs, all of us Divine, with no defender (who will be a Warden when he comes in, so no god squad ).

Our first fight, and the DM's first exposure to an Avenger in play, was against a group of kobolds. I fought my way to a kobold with a deathmaster template (or whatever it's called), and I completely messed him up. He double shifted away from me twice; the first time, I used an action point to deal an extra 12 damage in one turn; the second time, I got the extra 6, and got to start adjacent due to my Bond of Pursuit. I ended the combat with 3 hp, which made me very pleased from a flavor perspective.

The rest of the battles were against undead, at higher difficulty since we were divine classes and therefore better equipped to deal with them. Abjure Undead is zomgtehpwn. I was regularly doing around 30+ damage once per encounter to a single target and pulling them adjacent. This was especially awesome combined with the Invoker's Rebuke Undead, which dazes and eliminates whatever minor actions they might have wanted to use. Cramped battlefields were tough, though, especially since I didn't necessarily want to pull enemies next to my allies. My only concern with Abjure Undead is that it is an implement power, and therefore won't scale too well unless I keep up with it. If I do keep up with it, though, it may open the door to other implement powers I would otherwise not have considered.

Overall, I have to echo that the double rolling is awesome, especially with high-damaging weapons (fullblade for me). The only times I missed were the times I used Abjure Undead or my longbow (I got low on surges in the last fight due to the wights we encountered earlier, and therefore had to change tactics). I was able to use Elven Accuracy to my advantage for most of those misses. Even without my censure's damage, I knew I was a striker.

The Avenger gets an enthustiastic thumbs up from me. I'm curious to see how well things go next week, especially if we go up against more non-undead.

 

[James McMurray]

I started running Touch of Madness from Dragon magazine (10th level adventure, but they're an 11th level party). The party has a ranger and an avenger. There was also a rogue for a little while, but the combat he was in didn't have the avenger in it, and was against fliers so he had a rough time getting CA.

The adventure has an interesting mix of lower level monsters, higher level monsters, and lower or equal level monsters with the elite template applied.

I didn't track exact damage totals, but going from my memory and gut feeling, the Avenger outdamaged the Ranger against the higher level and elite monsters. But when there were lower levelled monsters in the fight, the ranger tore them up more easily, as their lower AC meant his two attack rolls were consistently dealing two sets of damage.

That sounds about right, and I'll be looking ahead at fights to see if I can't massage them a bit to continue with the some low, some high paradigm, since it gave them both slots they could shine in.