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It's not too intuitive, but the Eyebite+Eldritch Strike (or any decent MBA, really) can be pretty effective. Pick an enemy without adjacent allies, become invisible against it, and move next to it. The monster now has to choose between shifting + charging a different ally (which is not always...

A quick search yielded two threads mentioning that Flaming Sphere was out of control and needed to be changed (dating back to 2009). Thread 1 Thread 2

As much as I like 4E, I've always found its treasure system to be underwhelming. To be more specific, I think the basic framework for magic items is fine (even the rarity rules!), but the absolute lack of balance and the excessive amounts of worthless items ruins it for me. This is not a problem...

I have long thought that the Controller role wasn't all that well defined, and would work much better as two separate roles: the Controller, and the Blaster. - The Blaster role would cover characters focused on damaging multiple enemies at once, typically at a range (as Sorcerers and Evocation...

What about Ravenloft? There was a book (or box, whatever) announced and cancelled for the end of this year. I wouldn't be surprised if they used that material for a DDI release a la Class Compendium. Or doesn't that sound (semi)obscure enough?

This looks like a job for... the knight! Ok, not really, because the slide 3 thing really screws with Defender's Aura, but still, I'd say this is an encounter that favors Essential defenders over their traditional, marking brethren. While not a hard lock by any means, getting Def. Aura cancelled...

I wouldn't do that... I have always liked prime shot, because it makes ranged characters who would otherwise sit and shoot from a safe distance have a reason to care for positioning. It's not terribly strong, but I'd look for different places to give a boost to the class. On a related note, I...

Is it? With items selling at 20% of market value, the amount of gold you get from selling gear, with or without guttersnipe, doesn't seem all that great to me. Relative to expected PC wealth (or item cost, for that matter), at least - in absolute terms, I'm sure it will be a ton of extra gold...

You could finish off the bugger with a damaging zone, though there aren't many of those that aren't dailies. But cloud of daggers and similar stuff work great, there... Anyway, that's an annoying interaction, but it's not the first time I've seen it in a lurker. I remember some gargoyles which...

It looks like the chart focuses on at-will DPR, which is the standard metric, but also a confusing one to evaluate feats. The use of multi[W] encounter powers should mean that anything providing a hit bonus or a damage bonus per damage die is relatively stronger, compared to static damage like...

Interestingly, the fact that the heal-negating trait is "save ends" rather than lasting for a full turn is a major boon for the PCs, here. Most leaders will have some way to grant extra saves so, while this is definitely something to take into account, it doesn't screw players as badly as it...

It is a nice and much-needed house rule, in my opinion. For our campaign, we addressed this by making all movement by dominated characters count as forced movement, and subject to the same rules (i.e. no OAs, and can save vs. cliff). There is an additional exploit against dominated characters...

Item prices (and PC cash rewards, for that matter) do get pretty silly at higher levels, and I don't think there's a reason for that other than to prevent lower level characters from buying a +6 weapon. I haven't had to deal with this in our games, because we don't usually deal with gold -...

Aegeri, after looking at some feat and power options for the knight, I think it may be possible to shore up the deficiencies you pointed out without resorting to dwarves, World Serpent Grasp, Warpriest, or any specific items. Admittedly, I haven't been able to play with or against a knight yet...

I'd say the Silmarillion starts off as pretty Epic, though the later chapters feel more like Paragon to me. Unfortunately, I never found it particularly enjoyable.

The silly thing is, they did add an awesome (though incomplete) new feature in this release of Monster 'Builder'... and didn't bother to tell anyone! I only found out about this through some forum comments , but the program can now display pictures of a selected monster, which is all kinds of...

I'm afraid not. The new monster "builder" can only change a monster's level, but won't do anything to update damage figures to the current guidelines. Using compendium to look for alternatives is slightly better, but still, only three books have been released using the modern design: Monster...

Yes, it should hold regardless of level. I'd watch out for the following issues, though: - Early monster manuals have a few monsters whose stats (mostly damage) deviate too much from Dungeon Master's Guide guidelines. Those errors aren't fixed by this kind of tweaking. Thankfully, most of them...

It is possible to do some quick monster tweaking without homogeneizing them so much. For that, I'd recommend the following steps. - For standard monsters, use the original damage expression and add bonus damage equal to one half the monster's level. If the monster is a brute, make the bonus two...

I was thinking about possible elemental classes today, and came to the same conclusion: the whole mechanic of having multiple (elemental) options per power fits very well in the runepriest class. And I don't think it would be such a stretch to think of a runepriest that uses elemental runes...