A homebrewed Striker's extra damage ability

[Thorvald_Grimbjorn]

Hello, everyone. I've been developing a homebrewed Striker class, and I would like it if you could review its extra damage ability (similar to the Rogue's Sneak Attack) and see whether it's too powerful:

Once per round when you are bloodied, an attack you make deals extra damage, if the attack hits. If you have dealt this extra damage since the start of your turn, you cannot deal it again until the start of your next turn. You decide whether to apply the extra damage after making the damage roll. As you advance in level, your extra damage increases.

Level Extra damage
01-10 +2d6
11-20 +3d6
21-30 +5d6​

 

[Staffan]

Definitely not too powerful, at least looking at the ability in isolation. The rogue will likely get his sneak attack on something like 75-90% of his attacks, while yours will get his extra damage on less than 50% (you generally spend less time bloodied than not).

That said, the rogue's sneak attack is given more oomph than the ranger's hunter's quarry and the warlock's curse partially to compensate for a lower base damage. Rangers usually use longbows or bastard swords, for d10s base damage, and warlocks tend to use d10s for base damage as well. Rogues do d6 or d4 as base damage (though I haven't done an in-depth comparison to see if the rogue's encounter and daily powers get higher damage multipliers to make up for it as well).

Your ability sounds a bit Berserker-ish, which in turn sounds like it uses big weapons that do lots of damage. If so, it might be a bit too much.

 

[Crashy75]

Hello, everyone. I've been developing a homebrewed Striker class, and I would like it if you could review its extra damage ability (similar to the Rogue's Sneak Attack) and see whether it's too powerful:

Once per round when you are bloodied, an attack you make deals extra damage, if the attack hits. If you have dealt this extra damage since the start of your turn, you cannot deal it again until the start of your next turn. You decide whether to apply the extra damage after making the damage roll. As you advance in level, your extra damage increases.

Level Extra damage
01-10 +2d6
11-20 +3d6
21-30 +5d6​

This is interesting. What class are you making? I think that you should give it a special ability for when he is not bloodied (that goes away when he becomes bloodied of course). The thing with this ability (on it's own) is that it makes things very swingy, and encourages the striker to get hit which isn't very strikery, unless the class was also defendery as well. This would make for an interesting defender/striker hybrid. I'd imagine a berserker marking/intimidating when he is healthy and going nuts when he is hurt. I have a write up of this somewhere on my computer actually (I was contemplating what a hybrid might look like when I heard that the druid was going to be one). Can't remember exactly where though but that's the gist of it (mark that goes away when bloodied, extra damage that is added when bloodied).

Anyway, what weapons will this striker use? Honestly, I'd probably just knock it down to hunter's quarry levels if it's anything better than small blades. You can see how it works in playtest before starting with SA type extra damage. It's much more fun (as a player) to get something extra in the middle of play than to have to lose something.

 

[Syrsuro]

I agree. Definately not overpowered. I kinda like the ability, and wonder what the rest of it looks like.

(Sounds good for a berserker type character who goes into a frenzy when damaged).

Carl

 

[jeffh]

I think it's a good idea and unlikely to prove overpowered.

However, if it does prove to be a little too good (say, the concerns about putting this on a guy who uses big two-handed weapons turn out to be justified), consider lowering it to something like 1d8 per tier. Nowhere is it written in stone that a striker's extra damage has to be in d6es, and I think the first post is correct to imply that this won't apply as reliably as Hunter's Quarry or Warlock's Curse. It should do a bit more damage than those abilities to compensate.