Magic Missile

[Infiniti2000]

In before the lock! jk

Wizards took away a sacred cow and got roasted for it. They add it back in and still get roasted for it. Is there anyway for them to win? My personal preference was for the attack roll. As a DM I also hate autohit/damage abilities.

 

[MrMyth]

Well, in any given set of at-wills there will always be one that is most powerful, so that is not a valid reason to do or not do anything. I think you might mean that even +1d4 + items + feats is overpowered, and I think that's not sound either.

As it currently stands, Magic Missile will do about half the damage of a normal At-Will, but hits automatically. Assuming you hit about half the time, that puts it on par with other At-Wills.

The previous version (and other At-Wills) are better in situations where you hit more often or are adding large damage bonuses. They are more capable of being optimized.

The new version is better in situations where you are hitting less often (blind, at penalties to hit, etc) or are weakened (which doesn't apply if you don't roll to hit), or have bonuses to damage from an enemy being vulnerable.

What is nice is this means you can have the new Magic Missile along with another normal Wizard At-Will, and can use whichever one is better for the situation. That's pretty cool.

If Magic Missile hit automatically but could get all normal bonuses to damage, it would be the strongest power in the game - or at least, most potentially abuseable. We don't need that. Avoiding having one power be blatantly stronger than others is absolutely a valid reason for design!

As it is, it is neither stronger nor weaker than other At-Wills, but instead it is different, which is very useful.

 

[Oldtimer]

...more like the classic MM than the current MM...

Can't we agree that "classic MM" is not auto-hit? The AD&D MM was auto-hit, but neither OD&D nor BECMI had auto-hitting MMs. Multiple missiles, though, have always been there. If they wanted a classic feel, they should have given it multiple attacks with increasing caster level and left it at that. Not all of us grognards used the auto-hit rule introduced in AD&D...

 

[the Jester]

Wizards took away a sacred cow and got roasted for it. They add it back in and still get roasted for it. Is there anyway for them to win?

Although I agree that WotC often gets flamed whatever they do, in this case I think some people (myself for sure) are annoyed that they revised a power via errata for no real discernible reason.

Errata should be needed. This wasn't. I strongly dislike the fact that they revised it regardless of whether I like the revision.

That said, I have a mixed view on the new magic missile. I guess I'll have a better picture of whether I like it when we play next and the wizard pops off wizard's fury.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Pretty much any of those kinds of builds rely on some series of questionable rules interpretations.

The new MM actually IS pretty dubious in many ways from a rules standpoint. There is for instance no viable argument from RAW that it is an attack at all at this point. That opens up several cans of worms in and of itself.

As for the whole "auto-hit is awesome", meh. No not really. The new MM is distinctly weaker than the old version. At least the old version could be optimized quite a bit in a straightforward fashion. The new one really can't be optimized in any straightforward fashion and is just flatly worse by pretty much any objective standard.

So, by argument of 'fixing' something the update failed. By the standard of not fixing things that aren't broken, the update failed. It was a lousy change. There'd have been nothing wrong with creating an auto-hit at-will wizard power, there was just no reason to remove a perfectly good working power to do it and at least if you're going to make a new power make one that is not worthless.

Sorry, but IMHO an autohit power would be good from an objectiv standard, even if it dealt only 1 point of damage.

Guaranteed minion killing with no chance of failure has its merits. Removing a power which has to be optimized by power gamers to give it a reason to exist sounds like a good idea.

And the answer to the question if MM is an attack is pretty straight forward using common sense...

edit: and everything that uses missing on purpose is straight abusing the system and disallowed by default...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

The new MM actually IS pretty dubious in many ways from a rules standpoint. There is for instance no viable argument from RAW that it is an attack at all at this point.

The fact that it is still listed as a Wizard Attack Power Level 1 is good enough for me. If it were not an Attack, they would have called it something else.

Besides, it does damage to targeted foes. That's pretty "attack-y."

 

[CovertOps]

I'd have prefered to see Magic Missle given multiple d4 missles rather than go the auto-hit route. Auto-hit does invoke the classic spell, but so do multiple missles. Both would have been OK, too.

It's jut that doing damage to one target, however dependably, just isn't high on the list of things that make a great controller.

What they should have done is given MM to the Sorcerer. Then it could have been a multi-target (multiple missles) attack for a striker where damage is what you're supposed to do.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

What they should have done is given MM to the Sorcerer. Then it could have been a multi-target (multiple missles) attack for a striker where damage is what you're supposed to do.

Yeah...the whole design decision to have classes with completely discrete power lists bugs me. I simply don't agree that Sorcerers shouldn't have spells like MM or Fireball, etc.

If nothing else, from a design standpoint, it makes you come up with (probably) less than satisfactory workarounds, powers that look more suited for another class than the one that actually gets them or gaps in power lists.

 

[Arlough]

Just words

Yeah...the whole design decision to have classes with completely discrete power lists bugs me. I simply don't agree that Sorcerers shouldn't have spells like MM or Fireball, etc.

If nothing else, from a design standpoint, it makes you come up with (probably) less than satisfactory workarounds, powers that look more suited for another class than the one that actually gets them or gaps in power lists.

It seems to me like flavor is the problem here. When PHB1 was all I had, and I wanted a bard, I made a buff-heavy warlord and called it a Bard. No big deal.

My issue is with the mechanics of the new text. It doesn't attack, damage just happens to the target. And other items have been changed to support this silly premise.

If they wanted the auto hit feel, why didn't they just give MM:

Miss: Intelligence modifier damage​

Sure, this wouldn't kill minons like the 3.5 version would, but there also weren't minions in 3.5 to kill.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

sorry zapping minions is exactly the reason, why MM is fine now...