So a 2nd level Dragonborn Warden walks down the street... and does 613 damage?

[Nefarii]

Alright I think it's safe to say I have your attention, I am pretty sure I am reading this right, this post is doubling as a guide for an interesting combo idea as well as double checking the validity of this find. So, I was looking through the new classes because one of my friends started doing a dragon born campaign and I wanted to create a new character and I stumbled upon this...

So my str is 18 which jumps to 20 after the racial bonus or a +5 and my con is +4, I'm wielding a longsword, I have lightning for dragons breath, and then I took the feats:

Enlarged breath (dragon's breath goes from 3x3 to 5x5)
Primal Breath (Marks every target in the breath attack, not just the ones that are hit, but every target)

so if 25 baddies are coming at me (albeit in a 5x5 grid) and I dragon breath them, everyone of them is marked, whether I miss or hit. If I hit every creature, damage would then be 25d6+100.

Now wardens fury kicks in, warden's fury is an attack that does 1d8+5 to every creature marked that cannot attack me, so if 25 creatures are marked and only 8 squares are adjacent to me that means 17 of them take warden's fury or 17d8+85.

Now if I use my daily, form of mountain's thunder, and I attack one of the creatures around me with tempest assault I do 1d8+5 damage to that creature +4 to one other creature and do +5 to all 25 creatures, or 1d8+134.

25d6+100 = 250 or an average of 175
17d8+85 = 221 or an average of 163
1d8+134 = 142 or an average of 138

for a total of 613 or an average of 476, this is of course assuming that you hit every creature with you breath attack as well as every creature with warden's fury but still kinda insane.

Now another interesting thing to note is its effects on minions, in the primal book primal breath is very very ambiguous and says "... you can choose to mark each target" (140), which to me means whether you miss or hit with the dragon breath, the creature is still a target of the dragon's breath and therefore free to mark. Now I know with the minions it says that they are not effected by attacks that still deal damage when missed, but this doesn't deal damage, slow the target, make him prone, or anything else that effects him... all it does is mark him... so does this combo apply to minions?

Another interesting power is Gale Strike which does 2d8+5 to one creature and +4 to every other creature marked. Also for my next feat I was thinking about taking Raging Storms which does another +1 to all lightning and thunder damage which adds an insane amount of damage on this large of scale.

Im interested to hear your replies, Im sure I will get a few ; )

 

[Runestar]

I would say you need an exercise in optimism, not optimisation.

 

[Blackbrrd]

How did you manage to get two 18's before racial modifiers at level 2? That is more than the standard point-buy atleast.

Otherwise I concur with Runestar

 

[Nefarii]

yeah the buy system is 2-18's for a heroic campaign... its true it may be optimistic but it isnt impossible, how many times has you dm thrown 15-20 minions at your party? ... if minions count as a possibility to mark this pretty much insta-kills all of them without swinging your sword, and honestly I don't know why they wouldn't count because primal breath says every target can be marked, they are targets. Even minions aside if you get 5 bosses on you you are dealing 1d8+29 every single attack or doing 1d8+25 and healing yourself +4 every attack

 

[Destil]

Warden's Fury is an immediate interrupt, you can only do it once a turn.

Even if you somehow end up in a situation you can do this, you're not (statistically) going to hit with every attack.

The feat is as unambiguous as they come. You can choose to mark anything that's a target, and target is pretty well defined for dragon breath. So yes, everything. The only thing special about minions is they don't take any damage on a miss, other effects (including non-damage effects on a miss) still work.

 

[fuzzlewump]

If my players wanted to essentially dedicate two feats to minion clearing, which certainly wouldn't be in a 5x5 grid by the way, then sure, why not?

 

[FireLance]

Most of the stuff looks like it would work, but it's better to look at things from a per enemy perspective rather than the 25 packed enemy approach given that it is quite unlikely that you will encounter 25 enemies in the first place, and if you do, many of them are likely to be minions, in which case the amount of damage you deal is not very meangingful.

So, with your dragon breath, you deal 1d6+4 damage to each enemy you hit, and you mark all the enemies that you attack with your breath, whether you hit or miss. (Incidentally, you must have rolled really well or used a higher than normal point buy to get 18 Strength and 18 Constitution before racial modfiiers.)

This is where you might have misunderstood the rules: warden's fury triggers when an enemy you have marked makes an attack that does not include you, which means an enemy can avoid triggering your attack by attacking you. In addition, it has a range of melee weapon, which means that you can only use it on enemies within the range of your weapon - in this case, adjacent to you since you're using a longsword - so an enemy who isn't next to you won't trigger the attack at all. Finally, it is an immediate interrupt, which means that you can only use it once per round. Once you have used this power, enemies adjacent to you can make attacks that do not include you and only suffer the regular penalty of -2 to the attack roll for being marked by you. Since you don't get more than one attack per round from this power, at most one additional enemy marked by you (and not each marked enemy) takes 1d8+5 damage if your attack hits.

If you use form of mountain thunder and hit with tempest assault, one enemy takes 1d8+5 damage, another takes 4 damage, and all the enemies you have marked take 5 damage.

So, what this works out to is:

1d6+9 damage per enemy, 1d8+5 damage to one enemy and 4 damage to another, plus another 1d8+5 damage if one enemy adjacent to you made an attack that did not include you.

One good thing about form of mountain thunder is that the extra damage when you hit is automatic damage, which means it automatically kills any minions you have marked.

Gale strike would be another good power to use in conjunction with the marking effect of Primal Breath. If you use it instead of tempest assault, you get:

1d6+9 damage per enemy, 2d8+5 damage to one enemy and 4 damage to all other enemies marked by you, plus another 1d8+5 damage if one enemy adjacent to you made an attack that did not include you.

If you are fighting 5 enemies and manage to catch them all in your breath weapon, this could deal 5d6 + 2d8 + 66 = 92.5 damage on average. Not bad for a 2nd level character, but getting those enemies to clump together would normally require very careful maneuvering on the part of you and your allies. Incidentally, the daily power only adds 25 damage. Using just encounter powers, you can deal an average of 67.5 damage - if you can catch 5 standard monsters in your breath.

 

[Nefarii]

Thank you FireLance that was perfect, I did not see that Wardens fury could only be used once per round. This is not only good for minion clearing this is great combo that does quite a bit of damage, show me another combo that you can do at level 2 that could possibly effect 25 mobs at once and has a chance to produce anywhere near this much damage. And thats awesome that it does effect minions, thanks for clearing that up. And yes, this is a "heroic dragonborn campaign" and we were allowed 2-18's. Also, Im sure my dm will make the mistake of clumping a bunch of mobs together once and only once, after that everyone will be ranged, 5 squares apart, and have thunder/lightning resistance.


What are some other feats besides Raging Storm that would go well with this? I really like the idea of a fighter that can shoot lighting out of every orifice and deals damage that has no saves

 

[Ryujin]

Warden's Fury is an immediate interrupt, you can only do it once a turn.

Even if you somehow end up in a situation you can do this, you're not (statistically) going to hit with every attack.

The feat is as unambiguous as they come. You can choose to mark anything that's a target, and target is pretty well defined for dragon breath. So yes, everything. The only thing special about minions is they don't take any damage on a miss, other effects (including non-damage effects on a miss) still work.

You also can't interrupt yourself (ie. can't do an immediate action on your own turn).

 

[FireLance]

show me another combo that you can do at level 2 that could possibly effect 25 mobs at once and has a chance to produce anywhere near this much damage.

Well, at 1st level with Enlarged Breath and burning hands, an Int 18 Con 18 dragonborn wizard could blast a 5x5 square with dragon breath, dealing 1d6+4 damage to each enemy he hits, and the same 5x5 square with burning hands, dealing 2d6+4 damage to each enemy that he hits. If he hits with both attacks, he deals 3d6+8 damage to each enemy, or an average of 92.5 points of damage to five enemies per encounter. At 2nd level, if he takes the Astral Fire feat and has a fire breath weapon, this increases to 3d6+10 damage per enemy, or 102.5 points of damage to five enemies per encounter.

Of course, he isn't likely to hit with all of his attacks, so the actual amount of damage he deals in any given round is quite likely to be much lower than that.