Recent content by ComputerSherpa

There are two spells that I feel essentially describe the Paladin: Lay on Hands and Smite Evil. In the recent column Cleric Design Goals, Mike Mearls wrote that "Divine powers are subtle and indirect", citing bless, cure light wounds, and neutralize poison as iconic divine spells. This is...

Howdy folks! For our last session, my DM came up with an extremely well-done skill challenge which I secured permission to post for y'all's edification. We found it to be extremely well-balanced and to do a very good job of simulating the task of fighting our way into this troll warren and...

Ah, thanks for pointing that out, I'd forgotten. I gave this power to a villain (with some minor stat adjustments) and he tested it against my players. It was a little underwhelming, even with some robotic Soldiers as backup. The players have enough blast powers and put out enough damage...

Madness. If your players are like mine, they'll quickly turn their minds to driving their attack bonus as low as it can possibly get to take advantage of this. Expect to see people holding their swords by the wrong end, blindfolding themselves for the -5 to hit, and generally developing...

Most powers are sustained with minor actions, but this one is sustained with a standard (until the max-clanks limit is reached.) The minions are easy to underestimate. I could be screwing up these calculations, but if a level 1 character takes a race with a +2 to Wisdom, they can easily start...

Okay, here's an idea. Imagine a Kobold that teamed up with some PCs and learned a few of their moves. Eventually they parted company, but the Kobold never forgot his adventure and started practicing the moves he saw the adventurers make. Once he had the moves down, he started teaching them to...

I just got my Eberron Players Guide and I'm having great fun looking through it and marveling at all of the cool things it adds. I really like the Artificer and the idea of creating mechanical minions for use in combat, so I was really excited when I saw the "Clockwork Engineer" paragon path...

I like this! I'm toying with the idea of letting my players trade an action point for +10 or something on an attack roll. (They really hate missing on dailies.) They wouldn't be getting an extra action out of their action point if they took this option, just the attack bonus. What do y'all...

Ah, I see what you mean. Since a paladin can only use one Channel Divinity per encounter, through, I'm inclined to just let him have all 3 to choose from as he wishes. I'd rather not make him drop powers he already has so he can test my homebrew stuff.

This makes sense, but I'm worried about obsolescing Channel Divinity: Divine Strength. If I give Smite Evil a straight damage bonus, then there's no situation in which Divine Strength is useful. I also have to be careful about not requiring too many feats; my players are only level 3 and they...

Okay, I'll definitely drop the "+ half your level" part. My players just hit level 3 last night, so it's not going to make a huge difference, but I do want this ability to scale properly. My original intent was "dazed until you turn off Detect Evil or stop looking at the overwhelmingly evil...

I saw a T-shirt a while back which said: I'm a paladin. 1. Detect Evil 2. Smite Evil 3. Ask questions I approve of this! This is how paladins roll! But 4e paladins don't have Smite Evil! Half of their attacks are called "smites", and they're great zombie-killers, but they've got nothing...