Battlerager Vigor limiting it - ideas?

[Garthanos]

I am generally against banning things.. and like BRV conceptually, but I dont want it to be an overwhelming choice. I am looking for soft solutions instead of heavy ones.

patches collected so far...

1. make sure much more ranged combat is featured in the game.
2. limit thp gained to amount of real hit points lost last round.
3. improving damaging power of overly low damage creatures like some minions. (maybe give 'em weapon die rolls as static damage can result in weird immunity)
4. no matter how many hits you take you can only get juiced so fast (... only get thp from vigor once per round)
5. Halve the amount of thp gained if you are wearing heavy armor.

Thoughts other ideas.. I am looking for subtle things.

 

[Garthanos]

Note number 1 and 3 are changes to things other than actual brv ;-), but I think the emphasis. is good that way.

Nmber 2 note hitting isnt sufficient if you didnt take real damage the threat just isnt high enough to trigger the adrenaline rush or whatever it is ;-)
Number 4
is this too heavy of nerfing? reflex/ac fully applies against all attacks coming in?
Number 5
discourages heavy armor without prohibiting it which is a continuation

 

[Elric]

How about just reducing the number of hit points BRV gives you:
Battlerager Vigor (Fighter Class Feature): Battle Rage Vigor supplies (Con mod + 1) / 2, minimum 1, temporary hit points.

Dwarven Stoneblood: This feat becomes a Paragon-tier feat. Note that the with the above rule in place, doing the calculation out shows that a character with Dwarven Stoneblood gets temporary HP from Battlerager Vigor equal to his Constitution modifier.

 

[cdrcjsn]

Change it to:

Gains temporary hit points when the character attacks, rather than when the character is attacked.

That way, it'll renew every round, but not multiple times per round.

A bonus is that it's a lot easier to keep track as well.

Try it for a few sessions and see if it works. If it's still too much, then change it to renew when the character successfully hits.

Cedric

 

[Garthanos]

The various invigorating attacks all generate thp when you are attacking.... think thats would be a loss of concept

 

[Kzach]

I actually think limiting battlerager vigour to once per turn is the answer to all the problems of the build. It's still a great benefit, it's still allowing attacks to stack temp hit points, and it doesn't make the character essentially immune to minions.

 

[cdrcjsn]

The various invigorating attacks all generate thp when you are attacking.... think thats would be a loss of concept

Yeah, but not all of a battlerager's attacks have the invigorating keyword, nor is invigorating just a battlerager's thing since other fighters can use it. They stack, so this just means that he gets more temp HPs when he uses invigorating keyword attacks.

 

[Kzach]

Yeah, but not all of a battlerager's attacks have the invigorating keyword, nor is invigorating just a battlerager's thing since other fighters can use it. They stack, so this just means that he gets more temp HPs when he uses invigorating keyword attacks.

It's not really the stacking of temp hit points that is the problem. That's nice and all but I don't think that's what ultimately makes them so overpowered and imbalanced.

IMO, it's the temp hit points gained every time someone attacks that is the problem. It mitigates far too much damage, not just throughout an encounter, but per attack, to be even remotely balanced.

A first level fighter with an 18 Con and the Improved Vigor feat is effectively immune to melee-based minion attacks from minions up to around 7th-level.

That's just patently ridiculous and broken.

Making it only happen once per round, however, makes it reasonable and still a very nice boon.

 

[Garthanos]

A first level fighter with an 18 Con and the Improved Vigor feat is effectively immune to melee-based minion attacks from minions up to around 7th-level.

How about just this 1 idea.... for BRV only real hitpoint damage induces thp.
Maximum temporary hitpoints gained equals the real hitpoint loss of the last attack or the characters con mod whichever is lower (improved vigor bonus only occurs if you get thp and may increase it above that limit.)

So lets take that fighter you mention above fighting some halfling stouts

Initially
You get hit by 4 real damage everything is normal... you get 4 thp for next attack (we can give you 5 for the feat ) ...
next attack delivers no real damage so you lost all but the 1 thp you had and the next attack which hits is 3 real damage so you get more 4 thp great... next attack does no real damage so you now have no thp so the next attack does 4 real damage and gives 5 thp.

Tadah.... more minions mean more damage gets through and no wierd immunity, you arent totally depriving them of defense against multiple attackers it is just nolonger 100% reliable.

 

[Eric Finley]

My fix was to switch it to a Resist value (equal to your Con mod) against melee and close damage, and the damage bonus only applies to the one who triggered the resistance, only on your next attack on them, and only if you don't take damage in the meanwhile. Then behind the screen when I've got minions whose attacks ought to penetrate, I'll list that (4dam, 1 vs the Battlerager in our group).

This is actually more a simplicity fix than anything... the minions tweak gets rid of complete immunity issues, while the damage bonus is made more specific in order to tone the whole thing down, but the primary effect here is that done as a resistance value there's much less shuffling of tempHP counters. Which was honestly my biggest problem with it.

However, I like the solution proposed by Garthanos above; very elegant.