Ancient Forebear's Rage = Wow?

[mneme]

I was looking through the high level weapon powers (mostly because I wanted to test the claim that the Avenger's weapon die is annoyingly flat as things go into Paragon/Epic. Conclusion: Final Oath is probably the only really good option for a damage focused avenger, as both the effect (that +5 to hit isn't symetrical, given defenders in the party) and the weapon die are really good). Then I browsed around for other classes epoch dailies....and hit this (paraphrased):

...

Attack: Strength vs AC
Hit: 6[W] + Strength
Miss: Half Damage
Effect: when you roll 1 or 2 on a damage die for a primal attack, the roll changes to the die’s maximum value.

Ok...

So, Vorpal Falchon. Alpha strike = Ancient Forebear's Rage, followed by action point and a 7W Rage Strike.

A bit of monty carlo indicates that the average result of a AFR Vorpal D4 is a touch under 15. (I'm -so- not going to work out the repeating average, but the monte carlo stablizes at 15ish at around a million repetitions, and that's good enough for me). For the rest of my calculations, a normal vorpal d4 is about 2.5.

So, that first turn burst damage? That would be (ignoring other static bonuses, and so I can get back to work, without crit damage factored in (I'm pretty sure damage goes substantially -down- on a crit--maybe even less than a miss, though Rampage gets it back up a fair bit, so maybe not)):

.75*(12*2.5 + 9+12 (minimum item damage bonuses at this level; lowballing a bit) + 14 * 15 + 9 + 12) = 211.5, without further optomization. It's a good thing they didn't phrase the ability as setting 2s and 3s to maximum, or it would do infinite damage, though.

 

[Flipguarder]

Actually the way they word it you dont get infinite damage, your damage never gets resolved.

What I think you are referring to is using a dagger or any other d4 with brutal 3.

Id also like to point out that for a nova invovling a level 29 daily power coming from a barbarian, this is actually on the low side.

 

[mneme]

True, though I was lowballing the damage somewhat (I didn't have a crit line at all, for example). This one doesn't actually give you infinite [I don't buy the "never gets resolved" bit; if you know the result is infinite and the DM doesn't disallow it...it's infinite; you don't just delay the game] as I don't know of any way to auto-reroll 3s and not including the basic stuff that can give another pile of d6s and such added to your damage (which also get the force-max and auto-reroll feature).

Mostly, I think it's really hard to get a single-attack nova anywhere near the multiple-attack novas you get out of, say, the 5 attack Ranger D29. This says a lot more about the issue with stacking modifiers/vulnerabilities and multiple attacks than it does about how "weak" single attack novas are -- but getting average weapon die damage of 30 per W is still pretty strong.

Vorpal works really weirdly with brutal/Ancient Forebears(I don't buy the argument that AF "changing" the roll doesn't actually change what you rolled) -- Normally, you still do better with vorpal with a higher W. But die manipulation changes a lot. With AF+Vorpal, a d3 is infinite, a d4 is 15, a d5 is over 10, a d6 is slightly under 10, a d7 is 9.7 -- at which point the die's size is large enough relative to the number of auto-rerolls that weapon damage starts going up again as the W increases.

 

[Flipguarder]

First I think you should re-read the vorpal and brutal qualities. Neither give you the option of not re-rolling. Therefore you must re-roll until you get something other than a 1, 2, 3, or 4 on a d4.

Your point about multi attacks vs single attacks is fair, but I don't know where you are going with it. Personally I think the game gets quite broken at level 29 in a million other ways, so my question to you is

"why is a barbarian using a daily netting 211 such a big deal when the char op boards commonly get numbers double that for dpr with encounters at that level?"

 

[Flipguarder]

Id also like to point out the reason I think Avenger powers "die" out later on. As pcs get higher level their crit becomes more powerful, and avengers generally have a higher chance to crit than other classes. This continues through epic as they get crit expanding feats and crit die increase as well.

 

[mneme]

Infinities: One can deal with infinities two ways. Ok, three ways. First, you can decide that the game indefinitely stalls. Second, you can say "you can't do that, I don't allow infinities in my game". Third? You can take the approach that Magic and a bunch of other CCGs take -- which is that the owner of the infinity gets to declare an arbitrary point at which they stop and the game continues. D&D doesn't have an infinity rule (and I don't know of any actual involuntary infinities, as I know of no way to get brutal 3), so it's really up to the GM.

Re the numbers being absurd? They're not, though they're interesting. I just don't think you can compare multi-attack numbers (which are really broken) to single-attack numbers, and I do think this is really high (but not absurd) for a single attack setup (and a really big bump over Brutal 2 with a falchon -- 15 per die rather than 7 per die!). Any idea what the high numbers are -without- multiple attacks?

 

[mneme]

Re avenger damage at high levels: This is true, more or less -- but it's worth noting that other striker types end up with multi-attack powers at these levels that equal or exceed (particularly given their ability to effectively multiclass into Avenger for nova purposes) the Avenger's crit change. Yes, the Avenger will get a 2 chances to crit on a 19-20 in epic. But the Ranger->Avenger's L29 nova is including at least 10 chances to crit (and the ability to crit up to 5 times and stack crit damage on top of static bonuses) -- and that's before dropping an action point or making minor action attacks.

 

[Infiniti2000]

...which is that the owner of the infinity gets to declare an arbitrary point at which they stop and the game continues...

I choose 2000!

 

[Samir]

Third? You can take the approach that Magic and a bunch of other CCGs take -- which is that the owner of the infinity gets to declare an arbitrary point at which they stop and the game continues.

In Magic, that actually only applies to voluntary infinities. Involuntary infinities--i.e., infinities that you can't stop--do, in fact, stall the game and cause a draw.

A brutal 3 vorpal dagger is an involuntary infinity.

 

[interwyrm]

A bit of monty carlo indicates that the average result of a AFR Vorpal D4 is a touch under 15. (I'm -so- not going to work out the repeating average, but the monte carlo stablizes at 15ish at around a million repetitions, and that's good enough for me). For the rest of my calculations, a normal vorpal d4 is about 2.5.

I can help with the math here.

Normal vorpal is (2.5) + .25(2.5) + .25^2(2.5) etc.
So it's Sum(i=0..inf) 2.5/(4^i)
Which converges to 3 1/3 = 3.333...

AFR Vorpal D4 is (4+4+3+4)/4 = 3.75, plus rerolls.
So it's (3.75) + .75(3.75) + .75^2(3.75) etc.
And in an infinite summation:
Sum(i=0..inf) 3.75*(3/4)^i
Which converges to 15.

So your monte carlo was right.

(Plugged into Wolfram|Alpha to get where the infinite summations converge.)