Visions of Avarice trivializes melee encounters?

[Mistwell]

I agree the "tricking" can be wrapped up in the attack roll. That's not what's wrong (IMO, anyway). The problem I have is that at least one of the effects of the attack (immobilized) isn't readily explained as "being tricked or deceived" (Illusion) => it's far more easily explained as "being compelled" (Charm).

Look, it's cool to have a Charm power. It's cool to have an Illusion power. ....And these powers should feel different from each other, mechanically and stylistically. Make sense?

Put another way: How will the future Psion be different from the present Illusion-using wizard? Where's the design-space they'll need to differentiate the two?

I agree, the immobilize is more problematic than the slide. After moving next to the treasure that the ooze doesn't care about, the ooze is suddenly surrounded by salt and gets scared to move. Err, ok.

Yeah, anything can be explained away if we throw enough at it or if we just ignore explanations and play rules only.

for what it's worth... I'm going to have to agree with you also kd. I don't have a problem with the spell necessarily if the flavour was re-written as more of a compulsion/lockdown effect... but the background info needs to be provided. They do need to fill 300 pages of many more new books before they start over with 5.0 though...

Mike

Have any of you had experience with the Visions of Avarice power in actual play? If so, what was your experience? Did you feel it trivialized melee encounters?

 

[KarinsDad]

Have any of you had experience with the Visions of Avarice power in actual play? If so, what was your experience? Did you feel it trivialized melee encounters?

I have not seen it in actual play, but I do suspect that if any of my more tactically capable players was running a Wizard, he would most likely take it.

It will often successfully hit slightly more than half of the foes per round (due to the defense being Will) and I do think foes will try to get away fairly quickly once they find out what it does, but it is real sticky. Saves are made at the end of the turn, so anyone caught will tend to stay caught. For example, if one has 10 foes in the area (25 squares), one will typically hit 6 of them. Of these 6, 3 will make the save, 3 will fail. Of the 3 that make the save, there is a good chance that 2 will be caught again before they can act. Plus, any of the original 4 that were missed have a chance of getting caught if they did not leave the area. So after 2 rounds there is a good chance that half (or more if the 4 did not leave) of the foes will still be immobilized. In this example (which I purposely made a bit larger to make the math obvious), unless the foes have ranged attacks, 6 foes lost their actions in round 1, 5 foes lost their actions in round 2, and more actions are lost in latter rounds. Action economy-wise, this is huge.

Throw some Slow or Knock down effects in there and most of these guys could be toast. And with many of the bad guys clumped together, can anyone say Fireball (or even round after round of Scorching Burst)?

One of the issues is that it only affects enemies. Presumably, that is balanced by it not doing any damage, but that's still real useful. I could easily see an n+2 encounter where the Wizard casts this one Daily and everyone else only uses Encounter powers and does focus fire on one mobile foe at a time.

 

[ST]

I don't doubt that one can come up with a hypothetical situation where almost any power that does something more than {X damage, apply effect} sounds broken.

All the ones that came up when 4e came out also involved Orb Mastery, interestingly enough.

(Although as was said back on the first page, the hypothetical described here, using one implement to apply the effect and another to sustain it, just seems nonsensical to me.)

 

[Mistwell]

I have not seen it in actual play, but I do suspect that ...

Cool. It would be great if your group happens to use this power a few times, if you could report your experiences.

 

[KarinsDad]

Cool. It would be great if your group happens to use this power a few times, if you could report your experiences.

So are you trying to say that only actual experiences count? We cannot have a rational and informed discussion without actual experiences?

 

[Nail]

Cool. It would be great if your group happens to use this power a few times, if you could report your experiences.

My group(s) have also not used it....it did "just come out" aftre all...and no one in any of my groups are over 4th level. (What's up wit' that?)

But as soon as a wizard in one of my groups gets to 5th level, you can bet yer bottom dollar that I'll strongly suggest this Daily. If I get any direct experience, I'll post it.

Until that time, I'll have to be content with just thinking through how this power would work.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

So are you trying to say that only actual experiences count? We cannot have a rational and informed discussion without actual experiences?

I can't speak for Mistwell, but yes, I think so. If you want to "decide" the matter, you need actual play experiences. We can exchange our arguments for or against it all day, but appparantly we do not reach a concensus, so we need actual data from multiple sources.

Well, we don't really need it, because how important is the matter really?

 

[KarinsDad]

I can't speak for Mistwell, but yes, I think so. If you want to "decide" the matter, you need actual play experiences. We can exchange our arguments for or against it all day, but appparantly we do not reach a concensus, so we need actual data from multiple sources.

I agree with this in many cases. Compare two powers, they are about the same, there are some slight differences, yeah, we better go check it out and even there, we will get discrepencies.

To me, this is a pretty obvious case though. If it looks like a horse and sounds like a horse and smells like a horse, I'm not going to think it is a zebra.

In fact, most of the "Is this too powerful" types questions on the board, if it isn't too powerful or is only slightly powerful, people post some pretty good reasons quickly as to why the power or feat or whatever is not too powerful.

I didn't see that here. People like keterys said:

Last I checked, nullifying 20-60% of the combat is well worth two minor actions a round from one character.

Stalker said from actual playtest experience (using an Earthroot staff):

He kept 80% of the minions, the spider, and the eidolon on permanent lockdown the whole fight.

So in this case, I disagree. The people who think it is not too powerful should playtest it and tell us why it isn't. What are the mitigating factors that prevent a large number of foes from not being locked down?

The rest of us should feel free to discuss it without people telling us that our opinions do not count without actual playtest experience.

 

[Starfox]

The people who think it is not too powerful should playtest it and tell us why it isn't. What are the mitigating factors that prevent a large number of foes from not being locked down?

This issue for me is not if this locks down a lot of people; the issue is if its bad that the wizard can lock down lots of people. This is after all what the class is all about; control.

 

[Nail]

...at 5th level. Not Paragon, Not Epic: 5th level, once per day, for the entire combat.

Smells a bit fishy, eh?