A couple abilities in Martial Power seem WAY too good...

[keterys]

One DM's play style may make it useless, nine hundred and ninety nine will make it overpowered. Because it's overpowered.

Well, my fighter has had something like 10 different DMs (whee, Living Campaigns)... so that's at least 10 and 990

I have been pondering how I'd redesign BRV recently, though... and actually I think I'd have done it as a whole 'nother class entirely, rather than spackling it onto fighter. But eh.

Aside: If you want a bandaid for BRV, consider adding not having any temp hp already as a requirement for its 'when hit' trigger. Maybe it still ignores half the minions that way, but at least the other half get to do damage.

 

[Doctor Proctor]

Aside: If you want a bandaid for BRV, consider adding not having any temp hp already as a requirement for its 'when hit' trigger. Maybe it still ignores half the minions that way, but at least the other half get to do damage.

Yeah, Karin's Dad had the same idea in a different topic. As a Bandaid fix, I think it works well. It won't affect the low CON Fighters very much who are gaining like 1-3 THP per hit, because those will get blown off almost every time they get hit anyway. For the high CON Dwarf Stoneblood guys it will help to make them less invincible, but they'll still get some of the benefit out of having that high CON because it might take two attacks to blow through those THP before they gain new ones.

 

[Don Incognito]

misclick. disregard.

 

[Mad Hamish]

This BRV argument is silly. One DM may make the BRV useless, another makes it overpowered, just by playing differently.

I'm curious to see how you could make it useless.
Apart from making encounters with nothing but artillary.

And if you want to go and blame people for the "problems" or power-creep ... blame the play testers who should have made all these observations themselves, not the game company.

a) The game company releases the product and makes the money, hence they wear the blame
b) how do you know the play testers didn't make the observations and weren't ignored?

 

[keterys]

I'm curious to see how you could make it useless. Apart from making encounters with nothing but artillary.

Well, technically you're "paying" +1 attack in order to pick it up, so it is very possible for it to be a losing proposition. I'd say that in most games that will not be the case, however.

 

[Mengu]

I'm curious to see how you could make it useless.

Hypothetically, a mean, metagaming DM, could simply ignore the BRV fighter all the time, which would make the temporary hit points useless. Or same DM could use lots of high damage output monsters all the time, maing the temp hit points less significant, while mauling the rest of the party.

If you put the metagaming and hypotheticals aside, hit points from BRV will always be useful.